Anyone here have to deal w/ being on call when you are not salaried?

How does your company handle it? The company I work for has recently picked up a monitoring contract, and I'm going to be on call 1 week in 3. Will have to stay close to home or work, since I have to be able to enter a ticket within 15 min if we get a fault or a call. We are discussing how to work reimbursment since we will be on call, so I'm curious how other companies do it.

jhereg,
I'm a PACS administrator for a hospital system. PACS stands for Picture Archival and Communication System-meaning all radiology studies, CT, MRI, x-ray, etc are now digital on computers as opposed to film). I take care of the system.

I am salaried and have been on call since October 2004 (minus 10 days for vacation last year) and my system pays $2.00 per hour for the on-call time. If I can fix the problem from home (or wherever) then I don't get call-back pay. If I have to go into work I make my hourly rate with a 2 hour minimum. I get 126 hours on-call pay every week since . Obviously I don't get the on-call pay while I am at work.

YMMV and I hope that helps.

FF

That can be a sticky issue, especially if you are highly restricted in your movements.
It depends on the state and at least in California, the job and the hourly rate for that job. Some computer related jobs are pretty much exempt from anything if you make over $41.00 an hour.
There is, or was, the issue of "paid to be waiting" or "waiting to be paid". If you are highly restricted you may be in the former catagory and would have to be paid for the on-call time, even if you sit home.

This is something your company should get legal advice on. Five years from now a disgruntled employee may go to the labor board and if they find he or she should have been "paid to be waiting" *everybody* gets back wages for those years...

Most of this information is several years old (except for the computer pay info) and most labor law favors the employer now much more than back then.

I work at a water plant and am on call every 4th weekend. Also some days/nights if someone is not able to cover their shift. We have to be reachable by automated phone calling system and be able to get to the plant within 30 minutes. We don't get paid anything extra for being on call, just our normal hourly wage if we do get called in.

I really hate it because I work Sat/Sun nights. If there is a major leak or other problem, I am there all during the day working the problem and then I have to work the overnight shift while everybody else is home getting some sleep. I have actually ended up working over 40 hours during just one bad weekend.

Many companies offer an on-call premium that's generous enough to make it worth dragging the ball and chain (company cellphone) around 24/7.

I tried suggesting that when they expanded the on-call pool from the salaried supervisors to the senior hourly workers. The only response was (paraphrasing) "This is what we've decided is now part of your job, take it or leave it."

We are going to get some form of compensation. They have talked either an extra (paid) day off the next week or some sort of pay. The day off would be nice, but right now I could use the pay more than the day off.

My job I am on call 24/7. I'm salary now, but wasn't when I started.

The way we did it was we had to be within 1hr of the office during weekdays and working hours.

On weekends, within 4 hrs of the office.

If you came in during normal working hours (for instance, if you got called after you left work at 3 pm or whatever) then regular pay, after working hours or on weekends was overtime.

Like I said, I'm salary now......no overtime whatsoever.

BTW, I inspect power plants....

dragoman

Yes, being a homemaker.