Fucking smug asshole district manager and his smug bullshit requirements. I'm just a group lead and not even a real manager and this is already making me hate the idea.
"We're going to need you to pick a representative to attend these biweekly safety meetings at 11am every other Friday."
"Uh, you realize this is the 10pm-6:30am shift, right? That's basically the equivalent of asking someone to commute twice in one day to show up at midnight."
"It can't be helped, if we did it on your shift we'd basically be doing that to three people instead of one."
"Look, you have to offer some kind of compensation for this. Demanding this out of the blue is more than a little ridiculous."
"There's no money in the budget for that. Quite frankly they're lucky to even get overtime."
"I'm telling you, this is absolutely not going to go well at all if I just walk in tomorrow and demand someone do this. We already have three open positions, and-"
"This is not up for discussion. We've already signed several contracts where we promise to adhere to these standards, and they do audit people sometimes. I expect you to have someone there, this is not optional."
Lets just start with the most obvious solution. Why don't they do that shit at one of the shift overlaps? I'm assuming you run 3 shifts (06:00-14:30, 14:00-22:30, and 22:00-06:30) and doing it at 11 fucks 2 shifts. Second, it sounds like they need to do it twice at 14:00 and 22:00. That way the midshift guys can pick which one to attend, and the others can do it without having to work unpaid overtime.
Make sure the representative is an hourly employee. In my state they wouldn't legally be allowed to not pay them, and I bet it's like that everywhere.
Thirdly, there's no reason the representative can't just call in to the meeting.