District Court Judge Rules In Favor of Beatrice DHHS Member

[Omaha Steve]

https://napeafscme.org/2025/03/04/district-court-judge-rules-in-favor-of-beatrice-dhhs-member/



March 4, 2025

A District Court judge sided with NAPE/AFSCME member Nicole Jurgens, a Physical Therapy Aide at the Beatrice State Developmental Center (BSDC), after the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) refused to pay her the shift differential she had earned while working out of class as a Developmental Technician.

BSDC has, what it calls, a Supplemental Staffing Pool, which gives employees qualified to work as direct care staff the opportunity to do so when the facility is short staffed. Our contract allows employees to work temporarily out of class and to work extra shifts out of class when necessary.

Under our union contract, direct care staff earn shift differentials based on which shifts they work. When Nicole was told that she would receive the appropriate weekend shift differential for working out of class as a Developmental Care Technician but no longer qualified for the weekday 2nd and 3rd shift differential when working out of class as a Developmental Technician, she knew something wasn’t right.

“It didn’t make sense that I wasn’t getting the weekday differential for the time I worked, so I reached out right away because I thought that I was entitled to that extra pay and wanted clarification from my representative,” she said.

FULL story at link above.