re: nevermind

These employees are bitching because they are being forced to take a paid vacation day?
They're still earning the same amount, right?

Consider themselves fortunate. I know a few salaried people that have been laid off for a few weeks.
Their pay has been cut by up to 20%. These people were not given an option of using some large built up sum of PTO to utilize for full pay during these times.

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Also, I wouldn’t be so certain you aren’t getting maternity pay.

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We'll get the 60% of base for 6 weeks still unless something I don't know about has happened, but obviously that is nowhere near close to covering any real amount of time home. We've been putting away for it, but these GPT hours were part of the plan.

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You don’t “get” any PTO. You’re required to use what you’ve stored up. When that runs out, I believe they let you go up to 40 hours negative. When that runs out, you don’t get paid for the 2 days per pay period that you have to take off (I’m assuming the last part).

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This isn’t correct

You still get paid 100% normal even when you run out of pto

They are just forcing the pto liability as low as possible

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The way it was explained to me is that PTO dollars are basically in an "escrow" account (don't know the exact terminology that is used in these businesses), so if you force employees to take PTO, your operating expenses greatly decrease.

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It’s better because the PTO is a liability on your balance sheet that you get rid of. Example:

An employee makes $50 per hour. There are 30% additional costs (401 k match, health insurance, etc.) so $65 per hour. You bill him at $150 per hour, so $85 gross margin. Maybe you have $40 of additional costs, like facilities, liability insurance, so $45 profit when he’s billed. But he’s not.

If you make him take an hour of PTO, then you get rid of $65 of liability. You still have the $40 of fixed costs, and you still lose the $150 of revenue.

Forcing the employee to take PTO means you lost $40
Letting the employee sit idle without taking PTO means you lost $105
Had everything stayed the same, and the employee was billable, you’d have made $45

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She told me at the beginning of the week she was getting ready to take a bunch of time off anyway

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Good for her....

If you don’t use it, you lose it....

Thanks for the clarification LSU pride.

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They are just forcing the pto liability as low as possible

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Yep. For a system as big as Ochsner unused PTO is a massive liability on the balance sheet.

The debt covenant with the bank has certain restrictions about what the balance sheet needs to look like in terms of assets and liabilities. Ain’t much cash coming in the door to prop up the asset side of the fundamental accounting equation so they need to find a way to reduce the debt side.

This course of action is way better than laying folks off or violating the covenant and letting the lender do whatever they want.

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They have to take 2 weeks of PTO within the next 6 weeks.

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That is what I'm having to do. Most of my department is having to take off 3 weeks of PTO(whether they have it or not). Infection control staff (what I am) have to take 2 weeks off. We just have to take it off a week at a time and make sure at least 2 of us in the office(there are only 3 infection control nurses for our entire healthcare system).

Yet...they still expect us to do all our work and then some though (we are slammed busy as you can imagine the infection control dept would be in a pandemic).

Thankfully I have enough PTO to use. I feel bad for one of our new Quality Analysts....she just started less than a month ago and has 4 hours of PTO. And her husband just lost his job so she is the sole earner right now and has 4 kids and a sick parent living with her. We asked HR if people could donate PTO to her...NOPE. Bastards.


ETA: Still VERY grateful I have a job. Could have been much worse.

This is all a necessary sacrifice

OLOL has suspended all merit increases for now. They said they have cut most administration salaries by 10%. Flexing time off for staff. Have not touched provider compensation as of yet. Most of us are productivity based in the outpatient setting. Many of us are really busy with telehealth. I know myself and my suite partners have increased our volume in hopes to keep our staff working full time, which has worked for us. Since we can prove our increase in productivity, our staff has been able to keep their full time status without using PTO. We heard that our quarterly bonus will be held, which we were supposed to get this month. If that’s all we lose in terms of compensation, that is certainly a win for myself and the other providers. We start elective surgeries back April 27th, which will help exponentially.