Human Resource Blog

18 Hour Shifts

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Is there an Alabama law that covers the number of hours a Police Officer is allowed to work within a 24 hour time period. For example an officer works 10pm until 7am then works his regular shift at 7am until 3pm and returns to work again at 10pm.

Alabama has very few labor laws at the state level. None of them addresses the number of hours that an employer may require an employee to work.

Under federal law, an employer may make overtime mandatory. Theoretically, an employer could require a worker to put in 20 hours or more every day, and not be in violation of the law.

Many police departments solve this problem by asking for volunteers to work overtime. However, if there are not enough volunteers, then overtime may become mandatory.

Alabama has no minimum wage or overtime law. The state does have a law that requires employers to promptly pay workers on payday.

Almost no state has a law limiting the number of hours that law enforcement personnel can work. Setting a limit on the number of hours that a police officer could work might result in periods when there would be few officers on patrol, or even no officers on patrol. That would not be safe for the public.

Under the federal FLSA or Fair Labor Standards Act, police offices must almost always be paid overtime when they work more than 40 hours per week. This is usually true even for law enforcement employees who are on salary.

Many police officers work under a union contract that sets terms for their hours, or even limits them, except in emergency situations.

A few states have laws that specifically limit mandatory overtime in a few professions. For example, in Massachusetts a nurse may refuse to work overtime if she thinks that her exhaustion would pose a risk to patients. But such laws are very restricted.

A few states have laws that require employers to give workers at least 8 hours between shifts, but in most cases those laws don’t apply to emergency responders such as police officers, firefighters and paramedics.