Coyote Canyon Rehab workers lose stay-over pay

By Karen Francis
Diné Bureau

COYOTE CANYON — Imagine spending a majority of your time at work — clocking in at 4 p.m. and working to 10 p.m. each day and then having to spend the night until 6 a.m. and work again until 8 a.m., and starting all over at 4 p.m. The prospect is daunting, but imagine not even getting paid for having to be at your job overnight.

That is the situation that some workers with the Coyote Canyon Rehabilitation Center found themselves in this past May.

In May, workers’ $15 bonus payments for staying overnight were taken away, and the Executive Director MacDonald Avery said it’s because of the funding sources.

“Our work schedules were developed with our staff and the Department of Labor. What’s going on is there is an exemption for programs like ours in New Mexico that allows programs like ours to have staff sleep over and we’re not required to pay them for that,” Avery said.

He said that the rehabilitation center learned about that after an audit a few years ago.

“We understand the hardship. They complained to us in the past. What we do is we tried to give them a sleepover bonus in addition to their salary and we got into trouble with our funding source so we had to remove that,” Avery said.
The major funding comes from the state of New Mexico, the Navajo Nation’s Division of Social Services and a federal grant from the Department of Vocational Education.

The center provides community living services, vocational resources and job placement for about 60 clients who are living with disabilities.

Though those employees are not getting paid for staying overnight, Avery said as an employee of 27 years, he understands the hardships the workers have to go through.

“I just appreciate the support of the employees that do work with us. Our mission is to provide support for the person with disabilities, and the people we have here right now are all Native American. I understand that it’s difficult work,” Avery said. “I’m very familiar with the schedules and the type of work that my staff has to do and I’m very appreciative of their efforts.”