During the webinar we found out that libraries are exempt from some of the requirements. We were relieved to learn, in particular, that we don't have to increase salaries for full-timers up to the $47,500+ (don't have the actual salary amount at my fingertips at the moment)... they maintain their benefits.. but they become hourly. We just have to make sure that when they do go over 40 hours that the extra time is entered as time and a half. Also learned there is a cap on the amount of comp time earned... but it's in the 200+ hour range, so not a nail-biter for us.
I did send some follow up questions after the webinar related to:
- a) if a holiday falls on a day when a staff member is not regularly scheduled to work they currently earn comp time for that holiday so that they can take another day off at some other time -- the question is, do we have to enter that as time and a half since they already worked a 40 hour work week. We think the answer would be no... they would just earn straight comp time for that holiday (8 hours, not 12), but we wanted to confirm that.
- b) at times our staff swap Saturdays. Currently (because otherwise it is a scheduling mess) they only swap their Saturdays..... so the rest of the work week, including the day they would normally have off for working the Saturday remain intact. What that means is that one week they might work 32 hours while another week they work 48. The question we posed is, do we have to swap around their "off days" into the week where they swapped their Saturday? Again, it seems counter intuitive to us that we would have to do all that swapping around when it is the staff member who is the one initiating the schedule change, not administration (and again, it can become a scheduling mess to have to move multiple days around like that)
Still waiting to hear answers on those questions. We also have been referring to this document for clarification as well: https://www.dol.gov/whd/overtime/final2016/webinarfaq_np.htm
I'll be interested to see other responses you receive to your inquiry.
Thank you,
Stephanie Masin
Director -- Maud Preston Palenske Memorial Library
500 Market Street
St. Joseph, MI 49085
269-983-7167