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Legislation that would ban mandatory overtime for nurses working in hospitals is moving through the Rhode Island legislature again, but this time it appears to have more momentum than in the past.

A measure that would prohibit hospitals from forcing nurses to work overtime against their will passed the House Committee on Labor unanimously, which moves it closer to a vote before the full House.

Last year, when the House voted on a similar bill, it pass unanimously. The balloting took place, however, on the last night of the legislative session, and the Senate did not act on the measure. So, for approximately the 10^th year in a row, it died with the session.  

This year, however, the measure is moving early in the session, beginning with a hearing last month. Dozens of nurses and union leaders testified then that mandatory overtime leads to dangerous fatigue and mistakes.

Wendy LaPrade of the Service Employees State Council 1199, said studies show that nurses working more than 12 hours continuously are three times more likely to make serious errors, and that is about the same rate as would be made by a drunken worker. “You would not let me show up for work if I’ve been drinking. Why would you let us work if we’re the same way?” she asked the lawmakers at the hearing.

George Nee, secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO, got a big round of applause when he said the state could end mandatory overtime by simply requiring hospital administrators to remain on the job for same number of additional hours required of nurses.

A spokesman for the Hospital Association of Rhode Island said the group opposes that ban. He said hospitals should be able to determine their own staffing policies. And he said forced overtime is not a big problem because fewer than 500 of the 378,000 hours worked in one month last year by nurses at the associations’ hospitals were mandatory overtime.

Nurses challenged his numbers, however, saying that he included hours worked by nurses in areas of hospitals that keep bankers’ hours when he should consider only departments that provide services 24 hours a day.