Help with 24 hour shifts

[tomr63]

There has been discussion in my department about switching to 24 hr shifts. We currently work day,day, off, night, night, off, off, off.
While most guys would like to make the change, there are still many who have a lot of questions, like : how would the schedule be set up? How would it effect holidays, vacation time, sick time, overtime, swaps.
We are a department of about 140.
I would appreciate it if any of you who have 24's could email me with some specifics of how your department handles some of the issues I mentioned.

Thanks,
Tom Reidy,
Norwalk Fire Department
tomr1123@yahoo.com

[MIKEYLIKESIT]

How many hours a week do work? That makes a huge difference when it comes to working 24-72 or 24-48 with Kelly days.

[tomr63]

Sorry, I forgot to mention that. We work 48 hrs a week. This may sound like a dumb question, but what are kelly days?

[tomr63]

I am mistaken. Right now on our current schedule we work 42 hrs. or I should say we get paid for 42 hrs.
We work 48 hrs every 8 days - d,d,x,n,n,x,x,x -day shift is 9 hrs night shift is 15 hrs

[MIKEYLIKESIT]

I work a 52 hour week but heres how it could be for you. You could go to either a 24-72 shift. Even better is the Chicago schedule 24-48 x 4 with every 5th shift off as a Kelly Day. Kelly Days or Daley Days as they call them in Chicago are days off to reduce the amount of scheduled hours. A typical 24-48 schedule equals 56 hours a week. The City of Chicago wants very badly to put the firefighters on the same 24-72 shift as the single-role paramedics. The majority of firefighters like having 5 days off every 2 weeks. A 24 hour shift actually eliminates a lot of overtime due to the fact that there is only one shift change. Not knowing your CBA, it would be hard to give you info on your sick time. We have a very liberal trade procedure. The Chiefs let us self-police it. I hope this gives you a little bit insight. Our vacations are as follows. After 1 year 120 hours.(5 24 hour shifts) At 5 Years its 168 hours.(7) At 10 it is 240 hours(10) and 20 years it is 288 hours (12). There are places with better hours and places with worse. We will be getting an additional Kelly Day next year, so we will have a Kelly every 14th shift. Our goal is to get down to a 48 hour week which equals a Kelly every 7th day. That is nice because you get the same day off every 3 weeks.

[FWDbuff]

Get a hold of someone from Camden, NJ......They used to work your same schedule, and switched to 24/72 and the members LOVE IT LOVE IT LOVE IT!

[allison0523]

I work a 52 hour week but heres how it could be for you. You could go to either a 24-72 shift. Even better is the Chicago schedule 24-48 x 4 with every 5th shift off as a Kelly Day. Kelly Days or Daley Days as they call them in Chicago are days off to reduce the amount of scheduled hours. A typical 24-48 schedule equals 56 hours a week. The City of Chicago wants very badly to put the firefighters on the same 24-72 shift as the single-role paramedics. The majority of firefighters like having 5 days off every 2 weeks. A 24 hour shift actually eliminates a lot of overtime due to the fact that there is only one shift change. Not knowing your CBA, it would be hard to give you info on your sick time. We have a very liberal trade procedure. The Chiefs let us self-police it. I hope this gives you a little bit insight. Our vacations are as follows. After 1 year 120 hours.(5 24 hour shifts) At 5 Years its 168 hours.(7) At 10 it is 240 hours(10) and 20 years it is 288 hours (12). There are places with better hours and places with worse. We will be getting an additional Kelly Day next year, so we will have a Kelly every 14th shift. Our goal is to get down to a 48 hour week which equals a Kelly every 7th day. That is nice because you get the same day off every 3 weeks.

We work a similar schedule in Toledo. We work 24 on 48 off and have a kelly day every 3rd week. These are permanently assigned for the whole year. This year I tuesday, so every day tuesday comes up, I am off. I never work a tuesday all year. That equals approx 17 24 hour tours off per year in addition to my 36 vacation days. We assign our kelly days by seniority in dec of each year for the following year. We pick our vacation days similarly. I have just over 5 years of service and get 36 8 hour days off or 12 24/hr tours. Anyways, I hope this makes sense to you.. We get paid for 80 hours every 2 weeks. That is the purpose of the kelly day. We get 24 hours off in lieu of OT pay. Everyone here loves it and wouldn't want to go back to 8 or 10 hour days. We also have unlimited trades. The administration does care as long as someone shows up to work. I hope this helps you out.

[Smoke20286]

Our Dept of about 200 is very happy with 24/72, which is of course a 4 platoon system. Annual leave is taken in 24 hour increments by seniority 0-10 yrs- 6 shifts, 10yrs - 8 shifts, 15yrs - 9 shifts, 20yrs - 10 shifts, 25yrs - 11 shifts. One day taken off either in sick leave or annual leave results in 7 days strait off. Overtime is worked in 12 hour increments so if one person takes a day off, 2 people get a sift of O/T. Thats about all I can think of, If you have any more questions I'd be glad to answer them

[tomr63]

Thanks to everyone for your replies.

Smoke 20286 : the city I work for claims that our sick time would increase if we switched to 24's. How has it affected your department's sick time?

[MIKEYLIKESIT]

The City is mistaken. Why would sick time go up if you are working less days if you are on a 24 hour shift ? I dont think it would. The number of hours of sick time shouldnt increase, just that you would use 24 hours of it if you called off sick. If you go home sick, that amount of time would get deducted as well.

[MSFFKing]

My departments hours are 24 on 48 off but the way they pay us is pretty screwy. We have no Kelly days, no swap time, work 8 A.M. to 8:15 A.M and rotate three shifts. We are on a 3 week rotation of sorts....example we work

WEEK 1 - Monday, Thursday, Sunday
WEEK 2 - Tuesday, Friday
WEEK 3 - Wednesday, Saturday

and just repeat this process.

Are you ready for the headache?

If we are not called out during lunch or dinner or at night (12:00 P.M. - 12:30 P.M., 6:00 P.M. - 6:45 P.M., and 11:00 P.M - 7:00 A.M.) we get to put on our time sheet 14.75 hours worked. If we are called out during lunch, dinner, or at night, we get to add the time to our hours. So say we are not toned out during lunch or dinner but are toned out at night, we would end up with 22.75 hours on our time sheet. The highest amount of hours we can write down for a shift is 24.00 if we are not on a call at shift change.

The city pays us for 106 hours per two weeks if we log under 106 hours and time and a half if we break 106 hours. We can log in a two week period as little as 59.00 hours but still get paid for 106 hours. In a long pay period (work 5 days in 2 weeks) if toned out for every lunch, every dinner, every night we can log in 125.00 hours and receive overtime pay for 19.00 hours. Extra shifts worked go into an extra hours worked section where we get to write down 24.00 hours worked. Every pay period (2 weeks) we log in I think 4.16 hours sick time and for vacation its dependant on how many years you have in. For the 1st year I know its 2.08 per pay period. years 2-7 its like 3.12 and 8-something its 4.16. In order to take a sick day or vacation day we have to use 14.75 hours.

We have been receiving pay for holidays @ 14.75 hours extra for every holiday the city takes. If we work the holiday (ex. Thanksgiving day for instance) we can comp the extra 14.75 instead of being paid and take the day later whenever we want. People have built up quite a few comped holidays and the city is not happy with that. They are doing away with the comped holidays so you have to be paid plus reducing the hours from 14.75 to 8 for the shifts that do not work on the holiday.


The city next to ours has it a bit less confusing. They are 24/48. They get 10.5 shifts per year vacation/holiday, swap time, no kelly days, not sure about sick time, and the city pays them for 80 hours every two weeks regardless of when they are toned out. If they work an extra shift they get time and a half.

If you are still reading, I hope this helps.

[Smoke20286]

Thanks to everyone for your replies.

Smoke 20286 : the city I work for claims that our sick time would increase if we switched to 24's. How has it affected your department's sick time?

The IAFF has data available that shows sick time and injury time actually is at its lowest with 24/72 (which it claims is the optimum shift schedule) You should be able to access that.

P.S. our sick time is the lowest of any bargaining unit with the city

[woodylfd]

Lackawanna # 3166 We work 24 on 72 off , 4 platoons , 2080 hours in a year. Averages out to 42 hours a week get paid for 40 hour each week the
2 hours extra get credited with between 13-15 kellys days ( comp time off )

[SamuelFire]

I could not get my email to work tonight.

I am on a dept in Western Ky and we work 24/48 rotation which results in the following pay schedule. 1st pay period is 120 hours, 2nd pay period is 120 hours and the 3rd pay period is only 96 hours. This average to a 56 hour work week.

We get eleven holidays a year and they are taken by hire seniority (which I hate)and they are 24 hours long. Any day off taken gets you a five day vacation. With eleven holidays, you get eleven of these and all vacations are 11 days long, and I get four of those.
If you work on a holiday, there is no special pay. One week's vacation is three shifts and is picked by hire seniority and in January.

1st shift off results in 24 hour usage of sick time but if a 2nd shift is also used, we then only lose 16 hours for that shift.

We have an anal rule committee that limits the 24 hour shift swaps to 10 a year but you can have as many 23 hr and 59 minutes swaps as you want.

[hernandocntyfla]

My department works 24 on and 48 off. I love it. I seem to have lotsa time off. As far as holidays sone year you seem to get screwed and the next two seems to be alright. Just how it pans out. I have evn heard discussion of some departments who work 24 on and 72 off. Now that would be unbelievable. I sometimes find myself having so much time off that I want to go back to duty that day.That usually occurs when My kelly day occurs.

[newbomb]

we work 2 shifts with an individual kelly but not assigned to the same day it works like 24 x 24 x 24 x k x . so it might be mon wed fri off sat sun mon and then tue thur sat off sun mon tue and keeps rotating we get over time for anything over 106 hours in a 14 day tour of duty which means you get overtime every shift and every few pays work out to 24 hours ot and we call that our big pay.also since the rest of the city gets paid holidays off they give us the same amount as the city and they assign those to every 48 calender days. we call that our fiver cause it falls with your kelly giving you five days off every 48 days. after one year they give us 7 days vacation and one personal day.

[mtomek112]

Memphis:

Work 24
Off 24
Work 24
Off 24
Work 24
Off 4 days

Start over again.

[ABQFirefighter]

Albuquerque Fire:

48 Hrs. - ON
4 Days - OFF

[eng8251]

does any one know of any fire departments hireing ff/ents in texas

[eng8251]

sorry EMTs