An electoral turnaround

If you worked election night, control of Congress and the Wisconsin Senate weren't the only turnarounds you needed to think about.

The Milwaukee Newspaper Guild's contract calls for a 10-hour turnaround between shifts. For many Journal Sentinel newsroom workers, that could mean extra money for working late Tuesday and coming back Wednesday morning.

Whenever you have less than 10 hours between the scheduled end of one shift and the actual start of the next one, you get overtime for the difference. If you have a day off in between, the turnaround should be at least 34 hours. Turnaround pay runs concurrently with overtime for working late; you don't get paid twice for the same hours.

For example, if you were scheduled to work until midnight Tuesday, and ...
-- You left at midnight and came back at 9 a.m. Wednesday: You had a 9-hour turnaround. You should get 1 hour of overtime.
-- You stayed until 1 a.m. and came back at 8 a.m.: You had a 7-hour turnaround. You should get 3 hours of overtime.
-- You stayed until 1:30 a.m. and came back at 10 a.m. Wednesday: You had an 8.5-hour turnaround. You should get 1.5 hours of overtime.
-- You stayed until 1:30 a.m. and came back later than 10 a.m. Wednesday: You still worked 1.5 hours of overtime, no matter what your turnaround was. You should get 1.5 hours of overtime.

As with regular overtime pay, you should fill out a yellow overtime card and give it to your supervisor to claim turnaround pay.

And since this was a night shift, don’t forget to file for night differential, too. That’s currently 70 cents an hour for straight time, $1.05 an hour for overtime -- $5.60 for a regular 8-hour shift, or $7.70 if you work two hours of OT. But you don’t have to do the math: call up the electronic differential form and it will do the math for you.

If you have any questions, please ask a Guild representative.