FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

City Administration Releases Statement on Shift Differential

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - Several inaccurate statements are being made regarding a recent internal memo sent to city employees about how shift differential should be applied.

For clarification, the City Personnel Rules provide a shift differential for employees who work the afternoon shift and the night shift. With a new city manager starting in December, and through work with a consultant on a Classification and Compensation study and updates to City Personnel Rules, city administration identified inconsistencies in how some employees were claiming shift differential. All department directors were notified to check those practices and make sure shift differential was being paid equally to all our employees as laid out in the personnel rules. Those rules provide:

Employees who begin their shift between 1:00 PM and 8:00 PM will receive an extra $0.63 per hour; and
Employees who begin their shift between 8:00 PM and 3:00 AM will receive an extra $1.02 per hour.

This notice went to all departments and was intended to make sure that all employees are treated equally under our rules. The fire department objected to following these Personnel Rules. Their shifts start at 8 a.m. State law allows firefighters to decide for themselves how long their shifts are, and they have chosen to work 24-hour shifts. Although it was not allowed by the Personnel Rules, some firefighters were claiming the afternoon shift differential for 8 hours of their shift as well as the night shift differential for another 8 hours of their shift.

Other city employees do not begin getting afternoon shift differential at 1 p.m., even though they continue working through those hours, and the rules do not allow the firefighters to claim higher pay rates for working those hours, either. If firefighters – or other employees – were claiming shift differential simply because they worked during the hours of 1 p.m.- 8 p.m., or 8 p.m.- 3 a.m., that was not permitted by the rules, and it should not have been paid.

The fact is that shift differential applies to ALL employees, not just one department. We will continue to review our employment and pay practices to ensure that they are being adhered to and that we treat all city employees equally under our established rules. Ensuring the Personnel Rules are applied equally is not retaliation for the lawsuit filed by some of the firefighters regarding holiday pay and suggesting otherwise ignores the rules.

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