There was lots of mandatory overtime. Flights would be late. Another agent would call in sick. Someone had quit and a new person hadn't been hired yet. I often tell people that there were times when we called up morning shift at 3 o'clock in the morning (when we should have all gone home at 10pm the night before) and asked them if they could please come in a couple of hours early so we could go home. They always came in for us. We did get time and a half for going over 8 hours in a given day -- we were not union in my job, but we benefitted from the unions in other areas. I repeat: we got time and a half whenever we went over 8 hours in the day, not just 40 hours in the week. Thank you, unions.
On the other hand, we (outside of the overtime) worked five days a week, fifty weeks a year. Two weeks paid vacation. We NEVER got holidays off. Never. We did get time and a half for working on a holiday, plus 8 hours of straight time, so the money was good. But it did tend to make us very irritated at the office workers who got ten paid holidays a year. That's two extra weeks off. Sigh.
The other up side was that for the first few years I had a work schedule we called a rotating shift -- we worked various shifts, but our genius of a shift supervisor had it figured out so that we got a four day weekend every four, five, or six weeks, depending on how many people, four, five or six, were on the schedule. Plus, we were free to trade days off, so it wasn't very hard to get five or six days off in a row. With the travel benefits (basically free travel anywhere in the world) it was heaven. Yeah, you might work ten days in a straight, but then you got a four day weekend plus you'd trade with another agent and get two more days off and go to London. Or Paris. Or wherever. There was one time in that job when for an entire year if I had more than two days off in a row I could not be found within the continental United States. But in the long haul, we still got less time off than a regular office worker.
Because of the work habits I acquired from that time in my life, I tend not to think I'm entitled to any time off beyond my weekends and maybe two weeks vacation a year. As a consequence, I've been in my current job for a little over three years and I currently have 31 days in my leave bank. I'm still paid hourly, and I do get paid for all of the time I put in. This year I've actually taken almost all my accrued leave time, and it feels incredibly luxurious.
I want to tell those who put up with being required to work extra hours they're not being paid for, to refuse to do so. I do understand that I'm not in your shoes, and I don't know the realities of your situation, but if you give them an inch they'll take a mile.
Where I currently work, an administrative assistant told me a few weeks ago, when she stopped by my work station to give me some instructions on a small project I needed to do, that she was off the clock. I told her she should NEVER work off the clock. If she can't get everything done while on the clock then they need to pay overtime or maybe hire a temp. A couple of days ago, when she was again giving me instructions for a small project, she told me she was on the clock and she would not work off the clock again. If some of the work doesn't get done, then management needs to understand they pay her overtime or hire more people. Good for her.
Our collective ancestors literally fought and died for an 8 hour day, overtime, paid vacation, and so on. I hope we don't lose sight of that.
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