Following years of effort by union nurses and health professionals, Gov. David Paterson has signed a bill that will end mandatory overtime for nurses in hospitals and other health care facilities. The law will go into effect next July 1.

NYSUT health care professionals helped lead the charge to end a situation that puts both nurses and patients at risk. For several years, NYSUT has joined in solidarity with nurses and health care workers from the Civil Service Employees Association, the Public Employees Federation, Local 1199 of the Service Employees International Union and the New York State Nurses Association at an annual lobby day and rally at the Capitol to raise awareness about the dangers of mandatory overtime.

"This will begin the critical steps necessary to monitor the abusive health care industry on the issue of staffing," said NYSUT Vice President Kathleen Donahue, whose office oversees the union's health care professionals. "It's a solid, initial step to let nurses work at the jobs they love and not suffer this type of abuse."

Donahue said the statewide union would continue its efforts to expand provisions of the law "to alleviate the pressures mandatory overtime causes for our nurses in all areas."

Noting that mandatory overtime will no longer be an acceptable tool for managers to use to staff hospitals, Anne Goldman, a longtime hospital nurse who chairs NYSUT's Health Care Professionals Council, said, "Now it's time to have health care managers do the job of staffing."

Nurses have testified that many health care administrators rely on forcing nurses to work overtime to fill gaps — even when managers know well in advance there will be shortages.

During lobby days, nurses told of having to leave children home alone when they were forced to remain at the end of a scheduled shift. Others reported being too fatigued to provide proper patient care or driving home exhausted, unsafe at the wheel.

When it takes effect next year, the new law will prohibit health care facilities from requiring nurses to work more than their regularly scheduled work hours, but does not place a specific cap on the number of hours that can be worked per day or week.

The bill's Assembly sponsor, Aileen Gunther, D-Monticello, wondered why truck drivers are limited by law to working a fixed number of consecutive hours — but nurses have not been. "Ending mandatory overtime brings a new era of quality care in New York," said NYSUT President Dick Iannuzzi. "Patients will continue to be attended by great staff. Our nurses will have the dignity and professional respect they deserve."

— Liza Frenette