How many hours should your employer expect you to work consecutively?

Gem

The legality depends on what state/country you live in.

There are no federal laws ruling number of days worked without a day off.

And few state's regulate this for most private sector employees.

So, the real question you need to ask yourself is, how badly do I want to keep this job?

If in your shoes I would do one of the following:

Sit down with the manager and ask him if I am a valued employee. If he says yes, then I would just tell him that I will do this for him this time, but if I don't get X number of days off, I will be forced to look for another job.

or

Look for another job, then be darn happy when I turn in my two weeks notice.

Judy

It wouldn't have to be in two different pay periods. If he schedules you to work for 9 days consecutively, it's legal. He could schedule you for 365 days in the year and there wouldn't be anything illegal about it. If you work over 40 hours in a week, he'd have to pay you overtime at time and a half for the extra hours though. The "week" is whatever your payroll week is, and doesn't have to be a Sunday through Saturday calendar week.

Your option if he's scheduling more hours than you want is to either talk him out of it, or look for another job.

Margaret B

Under federal employment law the only requirement, outside of time and a half pay for work over 40 hours a week, is a 20 minute break after six hours of work. This is considered to be a lunch break.

As stated, your individual state laws make some more qualification. You would have to check.

Most human resource areas will have a poster listing your rights under federal law displayed in your break room or in the human resource area. The federal goverment requires that these rights be displayed in plain view.

Some states are qualified as 'right to work' states which means that you have no negotiating power. Other states have unions covering specific industries. If you have a union, join and get some of your power back.

If you have no union and are unable to get the management to grant you some time off and you can't tolerate the schedule, you will need to look for another job. Good luck.

smedrik

As long as you are not exceeding the maximum working hours outlines for your state then the practice is perfectly legal.

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