Daylight Saving Time ends at 2 a.m. on Sunday, November 6, 2022. For a complete guide to reporting time for staff who work during the time change, including detailed instructions for punch and webclock time entry, refer to the Daylight Saving Time Guide.

Exception Pay refers to a method of issuing pay. All employees except biweekly nurses and temporary employees are paid using the Exception Pay system. As long as their appointment is active, Exception Pay employees are paid their standard hours as listed on Job Data whether time is reported and/or approved or not. 

To create Exception Pay, the M-Pathways system follows these rules:

1. Issue pay for standard hours, prorated and paid Monday - Friday. 
2. Process time reporting codes on the timesheet which add to the paycheck (OTR, OTP, shift, etc.)
3. Process time reporting codes on the timesheet which deduct from the paycheck (ETW)

Here’s an example of how exception pay is created for a 40 hr./week employee:40 standard hours / 5 = 8 hours paid per day, M - F:

When an employee’s appointment becomes inactive, either due to termination or leave of absence, the system ends proration on the effective date of the termination/leave of absence, or the day the appointment becomes inactive. Because of this, time may need to be reported differently to ensure the employee is paid correctly on their final paycheck.

Example:

40 hr/week employee whose final day of work is Wednesday, termination effective Thursday. In a normal week, the employee’s hours would be paid as 8 hours M-F (40/5=8), but given that their termination is effective on Thursday, proration ends on Wednesday. This means that the system will issue 24 hours exception pay (8 hrs M-W). In this example, the employee actually worked 26 hours. Therefore, 2 hours of OTR are reported to pay the difference between exception pay issued automatically and the actual worked hours.

This information, along with additional examples, can be found on the Exception Pay Guide on the MMHR website.

This article will address the process in determining which shift premium applies if any to a shift of less than 8 hours (part-time). I’ll address this question for non-bargained for staff and UMPNC/MNA bargained for staff. I will address this question in a future update for other employee types. 

Non-bargained for exempt and non-exempt staff

https://spg.umich.edu/policy/201.55

Let’s take the night shift. For a full shift of 8 hours or more the shift must start on or after 7pm and before 3am or have the majority of the hours scheduled between 11pm and 7am.

If the shift is less than 8 hours we add one hour for every hour the shift is less than 8 to 7pm to determine the time the shift must start to qualify for the night shift premium. OR the majority of the hours scheduled are between 11pm and 7am. Either way, the shift will qualify for the night shift premium.

Example: A shift that starts at 10pm and ends at 3am. This shift is a 5 hour shift and is 3 hours less than 8. Therefore we add 3 hours to the 7pm start time which is 10pm. Since the shift starts at 10pm and that is the new start time after the calculation it qualifies for the night shift premium. 

Please note: Partial hours are not counted in the part-time calculation process. 

Example: A shift that starts at 10pm and ends at 2:30am. This is a 4.5 hour shift and is 3.5 hours less than 8. We count each hour the shift is less than 8 and ignore the partial hours. So, we will add 3 hours to the 7pm start time to see if this shift qualifies for the night shift premium. 3 hours added to 7pm is 10pm making this shift of 4.5 hours that starts at 10pm eligible for the night shift premium.

Example: A shift that starts at 10pm and ends at 2am. This shift is a 4 hour shift and is 4 hours less than 8. We add 4 hours to the 7pm start time making it 11pm. Since the shift starts at 10pm it may not be eligible for the night shift premium. The second piece of the policy says, OR the majority of the hours are scheduled between 11pm and 7am. This shift does have the majority of the hours scheduled between 11pm and 7am so it does qualify for the night shift premium.

UMPNC/MNA Bargained for Nurses

https://hr.umich.edu/sites/default/files/nursing-contract-2018-2021.pdf

Bargained for nurses have similar language to the non-bargained for shift premium policy. The two differences are: 

• They must meet both the criteria for start time of a shift (i.e. on or after 7pm) AND where the majority of the hours are scheduled criteria (not just one or the other)
• The times are slightly different with night shift starting on or after 7pm and before 7am (vs. 4am)

Please note: Partial hours are not counted in the part-time calculation process.

Example: A shift that starts at 10pm and ends at 2:30am. This is a 4.5 hour shift and is 3.5 hours less than 8. We count each hour the shift is less than 8 and ignore the partial hours. So, we will add 3 hours to the 7pm start time to see if this shift qualifies for the night shift premium. 3 hours added to 7pm is 10pm. The shift meets the start time criteria AND it meets the majority of the hours between 11pm and 7am criteria so the shift is eligible for the night shift premium.

Example: A shift that starts at 10pm and ends at 2am. This shift is a 4 hour shift and is 4 hours less than 8. We add 4 hours to the 7pm start time making it 11pm. Since the shift starts at 10pm it is not eligible for the night shift premium. We don’t need to evaluate if the majority hours are between 11pm and 7am because the start time criteria wasn’t met. A shift must meet both sets of criteria (start time and majority of the hours) to be eligible for the night shift premium.