So hypothetically if someone (a friend of mine obviously), worked for fed LEO and wants night shift differential but they are contemplating a 7x12's shift for him for the next year,(7 on 7 off). IF the shift starts at 8 am, ends at 8 pm, that isn't night shift qualifiable is it? What time would the shift have to start to qualify for night differential ( COPRA applies so 15%). my friends Coworker is SWEARING that as long as 4 hours of the 12 hour shift are after 4 pm it qualifies(0800-2000, would qualify) but however my friend(and my self) is skeptical and we are NOT finding any good spell it out in black and white sections in the OPM handbook and i think it would have to be a shift that started at 0930, ended at 2130.  Please let there be a Pay Guru here...

COPRA pay rules are different than standard OPM rules.

The majority of the hours need to be in between 3pm and 12am for the 15% night differential. It looks like only 5 of the 12 hours are in that time band so none of the hours would be covered by the night differential.

If the shift was an 8 hour shift from 12pm to 8pm it would qualify for night differential because 5of 8 hours would be in the time band.

Here’s a link to the actual law for COPRA.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/19/267

Even if they weren't different as rifleman pointed out you'd still be boned because OPM defines night shift as 3pm to 8am in which case you're still looking at only 5 hours and you'd need a majority of the hours to get diff. I'm assuming you guys are customs if you're covered by COPRA. If you need anything more specific I'm a NTEU rep and have access to some AWS stuff.

Thanks... getting stuck writing a schedule SUCKS...

in my agency 8am-8pm would be 2 hours of night diff(18:00-06:00) at 10%

If you’re actually looking for a 12 hour shift that fits. 10am to 10pm should be covered by night differential. 7 of 12 hours are covered by the 15% time band.

the actual bigger issue for my agency would be sunday diff.  The 8PM-8AM guys would actually get the whole shift covered by sunday diff(at 25%) because opm regs

Things must have changed a lot.  I remember ND was anything between 6pm and 6am.  You could start at 11am and work to 7pm and still claim at least one hour of ND, 6pm to 7pm.

If your Saturday shift went into Sunday, even for an hour, you get a whole 8 hours of Sunday pay plus ND.

I used to sign off on the time sheets and had to make sure the shifts were properly reported so I know something about this or at least I used to but that was years ago so somethings may have changed.

Under copra, the majority of the shift must occur in the premium pay hours to receive the premium.  For us COPRA is 15% for evenings and 20% for nights.  8pm to 8am would be straight 20% for 12hrs.

I've been a Fed 1811 for 20 years. Any time worked from 6pm-6am is covered by night diff. I cant speak to anything other than GS scale pay, but if you worked 8am to 8pm, you would get 2 hours of night diff pay.

Thanks guys, looks like MORE than 50% of the shift must be after 3pm for 15%. No single hour differentials.

under COPRA for series 1895 the entire shift would be straight time.

this is correct for series 1895 under COPRA.