Dave,
You're still a house mouse aren't you? I don't remember. Anyway, going from 2 shifts of 12 hrs. to 3 - 8's will actually decrease staffing.
You may not be aware, but if you do some snooping you'll find out, that 3-in-3-out is as alive and well as it has ever been. Techs are just better at hiding it. I came back onto the road in 2001 and was told that the 3/3 was a thing of the past. I believed them and did a 2-in-1-out schedule with full approval of the house. I didn't know any better. The rest of the plant was doing 2/2. Since then every single outage has been a 50-50 split of 2/2 or 3/3.
But anyway, any group that runs a 3/3 or 2/2 is actually running with four shifts. So, if you think you have two shifts of 30 contractors, you actually have 4 shifts of 15. You cut it down to 3 shifts of 15, and you go from 60 to 45 techs per outage. Instead of coming to work and immediately starting a 2 hour break- or ending their shift on one, everyone does 2 in, 1 out, 2 in 1 out, 2 in and DONE. They work 6 out of 8 hours instead of 6 out of 12.
The downside of this is that there is absolutely nobody to spare when the big jobs occur. There will be nobody to borrow from refuel while you pop the s/g manways, and nobody extra on BOP when you need a cavity decon covered. You will have three turnovers per day instead of two. You will not turnover to the crew who turns over to you. BIG opportunity for missed communications and interrupted work flow.
PLUS, the loss of overtime will be the absolute last straw that drives the remaining roadies out of the business. Why leave home for 48 hrs a week?
You are right, the rules need not apply to contract HP's (or most of the house techs for that matter), but many utilities already use the work hour rules to justify cutting overtime, and they will do it even more with the new rule.
You and I know that the rule doesn't apply to the majority of the work force, but that doesn't stop management from applying it to them anyway for fiscal reasons.
I'm very curious to see how this plays out.