STAND

STAND. COM. REP. 21

Honolulu, Hawaii

, 2003

RE: H.B. No. 392

H.D. 1

Honorable Calvin K.Y. Say

Speaker, House of Representatives

Twenty-Second State Legislature

Regular Session of 2003

State of Hawaii

Sir:

Your Committee on Health, to which was referred H.B. No. 392 entitled:

"A BILL FOR AN ACT RELATING TO MANDATORY OVERTIME FOR NURSES,"

begs leave to report as follows:

The purpose of this bill is to prohibit:

(1) Hospitals from mandating nurses to work overtime, except under a state emergency; and

(2) Employers from discriminating or otherwise penalizing a nurse for refusing to accept overtime work.

However, certain advanced practice registered nurses are exempt from the restrictions on overtime.

The Hawaii Government Employees Association, Hawaii Nurses Association, and many concerned individuals testified in support of this measure.

Kaiser Permanente, Hawaii Pacific Health, Healthcare Association of Hawaii, Kapiolani Medical Center, Straub Clinic and Hospital, Hawaii Medical Association, Queen's Medical Center, Wilcox Memorial Hospital, and a concerned individual opposed this measure.

Your Committee finds that while nurses are not directly mandated to work overtime, they often feel coerced into working overtime for the sake of patient safety and to alleviate the burden on other colleagues. Your Committee further finds that the problem of unwanted or unanticipated overtime is more problematic at certain hospitals.

Many hospitals have a clause in the recently revised contracts arising from the recent nurses' strike that place limits or prohibit mandatory overtime, but nurses do not feel that it has helped to limit coercion into working overtime. Nurses believe that long work-shifts are a hazard to the patients, as well as themselves, and unplanned overtime causes a host of personal problems such as the need to find child care at the last minute.

Your Committee has amended this measure by:

(1) Limiting nurses work shifts to no longer than 16 consecutive hours and requiring a minimum of an eight-hour break between the end of one shift and the beginning of another;

(2) Removing the provision that requires employers to implement alternative staffing under a state of emergency prior to requiring a nurse to work overtime;

(3) Eliminating redundant language that prohibits employers from coercing nurses into working overtime or discriminating against a nurse refusing to work overtime;

(4) Eliminating the exemption for certain advanced practice registered nurses;

(5) Changing the effective date to January 1, 2006; and

(6) Making technical, nonsubstantive amendments for purposes of style and clarity.

As affirmed by the record of votes of the members of your Committee on Health that is attached to this report, your Committee is in accord with the intent and purpose of H.B. No. 392, as amended herein, and recommends that it pass Second Reading in the form attached hereto as H.B. No. 392, H.D. 1, and be referred to the Committee on Labor and Public Employment.

Respectfully submitted on behalf of the members of the Committee on Health,

		____________________________ DENNIS A. ARAKAKI, Chair