Keith B wrote:WildBill wrote:nightmare69 wrote:So there is nothing they can do if you are unavailable. No one should have to put their life on hold and not be compensated for it.
Of course they can "do something". They can find someone else who is willing to "put their life on hold" and not be compensated. INAL
This. If you are a salaried employee, then they can make you be on call as much as they want, and they do not have to give you comp time or any extra pay. If you don't like it, they will find someone who does.
I spent over 35 years being on call and available. They were usually reasonable if you were not the official 'on call' person for that week and were tied up. They would try to find someone else. However, if you were the official on-call person, then you were on the hook to drop what you were doing and get on the phone or head to the office to work.
Also
As a (salaried, and thus different rules) technical support engineer for three different companies over the years I was not only assigned a periodic rotation of "official" on call, when I was darn well expected to be available, but I was also expected to be on call for "overflow" or "specific expertise" the rest of the time. As a team lead at two of those companies, my on call time was spent fielding internal calls, which could be more complicated than customer issues, and there was no such thing as not hearing the phone or being out of range.
I spent half of my friend's daughter's wedding reception sitting in the parking lot on a conference call with my team member and an upper manager, working out an issue which turned out to be a popped commercial power breaker, which was wholly the customer's responsibility and didn't need to involve us at all. I never received one cent of extra compensation, as a salaried employee that was considered to be part of the job description.
OK, funny one. As an hourly employee in a union company, I got a minimum 4 hours pay for any call out that I responded to, anything less than 2.5 hours worked was considered gravy. One night, at 2am, I got a call to go to a state agency where the bells and lights were out on a console. Since they were a 24/7 operation they required an instant dispatch. I went to the garage and picked up my truck, driving past the place I was going. When I arrived the problem was evident, no power to the console. Searching the breaker box revealed no tripped breakers and I began to try to convince them to call an electrician. An off duty supervisor was called in, who turned out to be a friend of my wife's, and as I showed her what I had checked and tried to convince here that the problem was her responsibility, I noticed a second breaker box down behind some boxes in the electric room. And there was the popped breaker. Turned it on, and v'oila, power to the console. Worked more then 2.5 hours and got paid time and a half for it.
Two weeks later, same call, didn't bother to get my truck, just took a few pocket tools and a meter. Same problem, popped breaker, and this time the supervisor was there when I got there, and wanted to know why the console kept popping the breaker, I told her we would come back during the day and investigate. 1.5 hours door to door, 4 hours pay.
Two weeks later, are you noticing the beginnings of a trend here, same thing, reset the breaker, less than 1 hour door to door, and 4 hours pay.
Went back the next day and really detail stripped the assembly and could not find any obvious reason for the breaker popping. Suggested they have an electrician replace the breaker because breakers going bad, although rare, is not unheard of. They replaced the breaker.
Two weeks later, same time same place, and by now I am tired of always getting this call, and having to drive over there to reset their breaker. About 45 minutes door to door and 4 hours pay. I checked with dispatch, and it turned out they were skipping the seniority based call out list because my wife's friend had had a note added to their service profile requesting that I always be the first person called.
Because of the way this call center was set up, they all could call out, but there were no bells or lights for incoming calls because they all went through the console. I went back the next day and rewired a couple of the phone lines, the main number and a couple of others, so that they would also ring on a direct phone as well as on the console, allowing them to get incoming calls, if not all of them, if the console was down.
Two weeks later, 2am, my phone rings. I take the call, and then call in on one of the lines that I wired to ring direct, told the person to go in the electric room and reset 'x' breaker. She gets back on the phone and everything is working fine. 15 minutes, 4 hours pay, never even got out of bed. Went back the next day and tore apart the console again, replaced the power supply, regrounded and bonded the grounds.
Yup, two weeks later, 2am. Never got out of bed, 4 hours pay.
And again, except this time one of the people working there noticed something that solved the issue. Every week the cleaning people swept and moppped the floor, and every other week they buffed it. On the end of the console was an electric outlet that had been placed on the console for the purpose of plugging test equipment in, and every two weeks the guy who was buffing the floor plugged his buffer into it, and popped the breaker. Still got 4 hours pay.
Went in the next day and told the state what we had found, and told them we were requesting that they have an electrician cut off that outlet, and of course the bureaucratic wheels then churned into motion, and it took a couple of months for them to decide it was ok to do so and to let a contract for the electrician and such, and every two weeks at 2am on Tuesday morning, I got the call, rolled over in bed, called them, told them how to reset their breaker, and got paid 4 hours pay to do so. And then they fixed it.
