Without any explanation, and with only a weekend's worth of notice, a new early morning check-in was placed on my schedule, basically, as soon as I wake up I'm expected to check for any new requests that came in overnight on weekdays, and I check once on the weekends. The second day into this new schedule, I was given an explanation and told that I could leave a half-hour early on Fridays, or earlier if I had to deal with any urgent requests immediately on seeing them.
This has raised many issues regarding overtime, scheduling, and work-life balance.
Previously, the company has been very generous, allowing flexibility in daily schedules, and this came down as a hard edict out of nowhere with absolutely no forewarning or discussion. IIRC there is supposed to be more notice given for a schedule change. Further, my hours have not been otherwise changed, so I will be working overtime since California requires that non-agricultural workers be paid overtime past 8 hours in a day.
Complicating things is hard company policy that non-priorly approved overtime will not be paid (which seems to be illegal in California), and I have been told that the only recompense for the check-ins will be the flextime on Fridays.
I find their estimate of 30 minutes returned in exchange for 6 check-ins over the week to be extremely optimistic, as that leaves 5 minutes for each event which so far have averaged more than 10. We also round to the nearest 15 minutes on our timesheets, but I imagine that the least important issue here.
Finally, legal issues aside, I feel strongly betrayed by the company and management that previously respected my time outside of work and on weekends.
How should I approach this situation with management?