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On Call and Underpaid in IT/IS?
An Anonymous Coward asks: "I work for a Fortune 100 company, that I wish to remain anonymous. But recently an issue has come up dealing with on call pay; we are responsible for monitoring systems outside of normal business hours, but are hourly employees. It has been brought up to management if only being paid when an issue occurs is legal, since we must be ready at any moment to respond to system troubles/pages outside of the normal business hours we are paid for, which includes not being able to go out of town, etc. I've asked around, but with little success, being that a large portion of Slashdot readers are in the IT/IS field I would think that someone has dealt with simular issues and would be able to offer suggestions or outline their on call pay structure so that so that I can approach management/HR. Any examples of past experiences or how you dealt with such issues would be helpful, management is more than willing to work with us."
Congratulations on giving what will probably be the only good advice this poor bastard recieves. While Ask Slashdot questions are a great way to generate discussion, anyone who floows it for legal advice is just asking to get shit on.
Cheers,
Dusty Hodges
Firemen are actually much more busy than you might expect. Turns out the average firehouse (at least in my city) rolls 4 to 8 times a day. They roll for auto accidents, medical emergencies, cats on roof's, whatever. Fires are only a small portion of what they actually do.
In the case where you are an hourly employee, I believe the status quo is to pay per incident. So if you are woken up at 4am by your pager, and you spend 3 hours fixing something, you get paid for the 3 hours rather than the 12 hours you might have been on-call for. Most places I've seen put salaried employees on-call and just pay them a load of money :)
In my case, I was salaried, but being on-call was played down to seem like once in a while, but that turned out not to be the case. The attitude I took, while I was on-call or for maintenance windows, was if I was in from 3am until 7am, I would either stay there and leave around noon for the day, or go home, sleep and work a few hours in the afternoon. Company never had any issues with that. I needed my "sleep" :)
It sounds like your case is pretty normal, most companies only pay for incidents. If you have to physically go somewhere, take the time into account from the moment you receive the call until the moment you return home as the amount of time worked on the problem. If you find yourself on-call a little too much, you should bring it up with your management. I know in our case, our management worked pretty proactively to introduce 24 hour customer support to remove a lot of the small issues from our hands and into the hands of customer support, so we only handled critical issues. Depending on the company, it might be better to have someone there 24/7.. removing the need for on-call..
I'm confused.
Shouldn't you be happy you have a job in the first place? Corporations aren't hiring you just for fun, you know. They expect you to work for your pay! You should be posting anonymous. I would never hire someone like you to my company.
It's about time that people realize that it's a much better deal to be a contract worker than a salaried employee. I am a contractor, have insurance through my agency and still get paid more than 15k/year more than the salaried full-time employees in my group. Switching to a salaried position does nothing for you as an individual. It only gives the company more money cuz they do not have to pay you overtime. If you can avoid it don't go salaried in IT/IS!!!!
That sounds pretty much like the deal I hear most hourly employees get: $x for being on call + $y*hours for actually being called. The minimum 4 hours for actually being called would be great if you can get it, but most people I know of only get a minimum of 1 hour.
Most salaried employees I know tend to get compensated with extra time off only if they're being called in excessively and burning out, the theory being that being on call is part of the job and was already included as a factor in compensation.
my god, imagine that. if you don't like the terms of the job you're in, quit. what a newfangled idea.
all you do when you pass regulations and whine to the government about your labor relations is make businesses more expensive to run, ergo less money to attract more employees, ergo fewer people paid less.
and before someone spews that employers are just greedy, remember that they are people too. happy employees make for a good working environment, which they like. better employees, for which they would pay more to get on their side, make for a good working environment, which they like.
About 5 or 6 years ago there was a lawsuit in Washington State where sawmill workers were not paid yet were REQUIRED to be on call. They won. If you are required to be on call you have to be compensated. If it is a situation where if they get a hold of you, you have to work, that is different.
FLSA based case law says you are being screwed if your employeer is covered by FLSA. Check out FLSA or Fair Labor Standards Act cases online. FLSA is a Federal Law and applies to most organizations that are "large enough" or have an interstate presence. This might cover your employer. If not, then you are stuck with state law, specifically the state where your employeer is located. There are state FLSAs in many states. The American Bar association has something called ALI-ABA. Check out their FLSA materials. If you prepare most of your case as an outline or brief you can use a lawyer more effectively. Create a class of workers in the same boat or "similarly situated". Be prepared to be blacklisted and fired if you seek justice. The firing will be in retaliation for your action but they will claim otherwise. They will also claim you are not an employee even if you are a W-2 employee for tax purposes. The two laws are different. You have to prove you are an employee. They will also claim they are not covered by FLSA. By forming a class you raise the stakes. If they have done this in the past and have been sucessfully sued by other workers then their action is willful in the TWA case sense and you can get damages equal to your backwage claim. They will no like this but c'est la vie. They will also try to claim you are really salaried and therefor not entitled to overtime time and one half or straight. If you make below a magic hourly rate (usually around $27.00 or so) your overtime is time and one half, not straight. See a lawyer, but specifically a labor lawyer. A FLSA law professor at a local law school is a place to start. Some professors might be willing to use you a material for an existing class. If you want to become a law stutdents lab animal it might work out well for you. If there is no FLSA law class meeting then a labor law class (unions and workers rights) might do. Good Luck. Depending on the period covered as well as their willful ness you show be able to get enough back wages to buy a nice system of your own. Be sure to e-mail to yourself to a non company account (e.g. you@yahoo.com) any work or rotation schedules, e-mails, e-mails requesting that you be on call. These things will suddenly go missing the minute you take any action, so you need your own hardcopy as well as a proof of where it came from. Have you done jury duty? Were you paid for the entire jury duty? Or were you docked pay? Ironically if you were docked that proves under FLSA case law you are HOURLY and therefor governed by FLSA.
Sometimes "Programmer-Analysts" is a generic job title for "Works in IT". Not necessarily a programmer or a analyst. (Especially true for government or universities that have civil service rules).
Lawyers are going to be of little to no help. Why not find a better job. A 10k pay increase and making it clear to your new employer that on call must be compensated would be much more productive. Companies don't change unless they "have" to. In order to get in new talent they "have" to negotiate. If you get a lawyer involved your just burning bridges and they will find a petty way to fire you.
If you liked that post you will love this cartoon
Q: What is the sound of a exploding pc, if there is nobody to hear it?
Check the Ohio Employment Code. The job definition cannot change without employee approval. This means that if the employee is required to do "other duties as required", it's no problem from the employer's point of view. On the other hand, asking the employer to justify adding to "other duties as required" puts them on the defensive and forces them to clarify or withdraw.
I am surprised (although I should't be) that employers would do anything else. Remember, the typical logic of an employment agreement is that you give them X hours of time for X dollars. That means that outside of those X hours, the time is YOURS. If they don't agree, tell them you'll be able to carry the pager, but make no guarantees about being able to answer it, since you are not adjusting your personal time table (for which they aren't paying). If they don't like it, and force the issue otherwise, be prepared to leave. (But post it back to slashdot so that we all get to know who the company was ;-))
I've seen too many web pages with text like that.
In supporting our product, techs on-call receive a flat fee per night of on-call work:
M-F $75
S+S $100
It is more on holidays and we also have a backup on-call person who gets half the on-call rate (though the boss is going to want to know how you let one slip through the cracks to the backup guy).
This reflects the inconvenience factor of sticking close to home/phone/PC and forgoing some amount of normalcy for those nights.
We are not paid additional per call or hours actually worked, which is nice in one respect because there is no record keeping or timesheet approvals involved.
If you don't get called, then it's easy money. If you do get called, then you work. If you get tattooed at 1 am, 2 am, 3:30 am, 4:30 am, etc, then that's just unfortunate and you're certainly not expected at 9 am the next morning like everyone else.
It all averages out anyway.
We once tried a system with 4 hour minimums if you got called and regular time after that, but it was a pain in the posterior tracking every last call and writing down how many minutes you were on the phone at 3 am.
I might add that we rotate call so that each tech gets 4 or 5 scattered days and then one weekend a month. With our product, the duty is too stressful and demanding to be on-call for a whole week straight.
A Nonynous User
(who works for a company that would like to remain anonymous in this context)
And you also get overtime pay. And paid for every hour you work. Most IT people work, on avergae 8.6 hours of UNpaid overtime a week. Salary sucks.
Don't blame the IT people for trying to get conract/consulting jobs and fair pay though. Blame the hospital/HMo that puts profits ahead of people's care. Workers are people. Corporations are not. I know which I'd rather sacrifice.
You honestly think that "System Administrator" has more prestige?
Jezus -- read the discussion at hand. Apparently any marketing goof that wants to check his mail at 3AM can get wake your sorry ass out of bed. Not even truckdrivers and trashmen have to put up with that shit.
When I was a tech at a hospital we were on-call and were paid $3.00 per hour to carry the pager. If we got paged we recieved two hours pay at our normal rate ,for travel, in addition to the time we actually worked for which we were paid time and a half.
I believe there are state laws about requiring an employee to be on call. It's the sort of thing you must compensate for. Check with a lawyer for details.
Contract?! Most employees are under "at-will" employment. Barring civil rights and other explicit legal violations, you may be asked to leave your position at any time, for any reason, and you may voluntarily leave your position at any time, for any reason.
Non-Exempt, hourly employees are generally offered more protection by the law. Still, I imagine you will not be considered "working" while you're at home, even if you're on call. If you could prove that some good or service were being provided while you were eating dinner, maybe you'd have a shot. I don't think your predicament is unique. I would go out on a limb and say that most people's jobs have some effect on their private life (some more than others).
(I think all doctors, be they GP, ER, whatever, are on call, all the time. They're not allowed to go out of town without letting someone know.)
Your job, like many others, is a product served in a free market. The market should dictate compensation. If people are willing to take your job, with the on-call requirement, no one will bend to your demands. If no one wanted the job, compensation (possibly the hourly rate, possibly a fixed bonus for on-call time, benefits, who knows?) would increase to match the market. Even though I think you should get paid extra for on-call (even as a cashier in a grocery store I got paid +$1/hr for coming in on days when I wasn't scheduled), I wouldn't complain if you were already getting paid more than your colleagues get for the same job without an on-call requirement.
While I think the government should protect those who would be unfairly oppressed by their employer, I don't think that this is a case of such. I sound like an ass when I say it, but "If you don't like it there, go somewhere else". "laissez faire" == Good Thing.
I work for a large hospital, and am a salaried employee. Although I'm not currently on call, I was in my previous position (same hospital, same management, also salaried.)
We received a flat rate/sum for our week of duty no matter how many or how few calls we received. Some weeks it worked out great, others not so good. (Usually I got the weeks with 1x10^6 stupid users calling...) That pay schedule remains in effect.
That was my experience, but I would strongly urge you to talk to someone who can give you -REAL- advice. Unfortunately, free advice is often worth exactly what you paid for it...
Best of luck with this.
The statement most certainly applies to you. One question: how do you listen to someone who is typing you a message?
They pay you $896 a week just for being on call!? I dunno about that! How often are you on call? Once a year?
If you work for someone else, then you are a tool. That's the way it is.
As an IS Call Center Manager I currently pay my employees 1/2 their hourly wage to be "on call", this is calculated into overtime wages as well. This is however part of the job description, if in your case it is not listed in your job description it needs to be addressed, if management is not interested you should contact a lawyer as everyone has stated.
I am an emergency physician, and for an overnight weeknight on call, I get 3 hours of pay. For a weekend 24 hour period on call I get 6 hours of pay. If I get called in, I get an hour to allow for travel time, and then overtime at 1.5 x basic pay per hour.
In our particular situation as computer professionals making over a certain dollar amount per year, the law does not even apply to us. Ordinarily, however, the law that WOULD apply to our condition was interpreted to mean that if you're able to watch TV at the same time as you're on call then they don't have to pay you for it. In other words the only time you don't have to get paid for being on call is if they're being extremely restrictive about what you can do while you're on call at the same time.
If they told you you couldn't drink, or had to be within so many minutes driving distance, or something like that, I would also pitch a fit over that too.
one way to research and find pay scales would be to look up unions and there pay scales. most unions have covered just avout everything under the sun about this sort of thing. eg. say your boss calls you at 8 at night and tells you that the job for the next day has changed you get payed 2 hours for that 5 min call. so to research some of the different pay scales i would start in some of the union contracts that are many, and every where. the pay might not be the same but it is a start to get an idea
I think that's pretty awful advice. I'm sure the relevance of your credo is that any company that expects you to consult for free isn't "treating you right". Therefore if the company wants to do anything other than maximize your benefits, you should act to minimize theirs. That's tantamount to saying in all relations with your employer you should be as antagonistic and unhelpful as your contract allows.
Your solution provides no benefit to the employer, employee, or future employees that the the employer might hire when you leave. Instead it establishes a volatile workplace where everyone is completely unresponsive to the needs of everyone else.
As a first-year law student, I agree with your "forget the lawyer" credo, but for a totally different reason. There's little 'magic' in that contract--read it. Check your federal/state/province labour laws. And there's a common-sense rule called the "parol evidence rule"--if there's a written contract, generally terms orally agreed to in pre-contract negotiation aren't binding. So read the contract.
> I get to have a cat at work.
omg! That kicks ass dude! That'd be a great stress reliever, but what about the mess? I assume you have to keep the box in your office. I know I couldn't code like that...
I was on call but was not getting paid for it and I could not go anywhere in case I did get a call and had to go in. Do what I did, take the pager and put it in the microwave for no more than 5 seconds. It fry's the electronics but leaves no melt marks. Eventually you can say "I never go the page" and when they test it, of course it will not WORK :0)
I'm not going to bug you with the lawyer crap. You want an example here you go. My company pays $40/day on weekends for being on call. This is defined as being 1 hour away from my house and within cell range at all times. Usually on weekdays it can wait until the morning. If I do have to work while on call I get 1.5 x my rate, on sundays its 2.0 x my rate. The kicker is if I DO end up working I get 4 hours pay even if it takes only 1, if it takes 5 I get 5 and so on. This is regardless of if I worked a 40 hour week. I almost never work 40 even though I get a 40 hour check.
There you wanted an example there you go, I hope it helps.
P.S. Of course a lawyer is going to say see a lawyer. What you need to do is sit down with whoever is in charge of the oncall staffing and hammer it out. All they can do is say no to what you have to say. Most IT shops have a vested interest in you staying on and will discuss it or at very worst say tuff shit - do it our way or leave. Then it becomes easy...
I used to work in the IT department of a Canadian University. It was a Unionized environment. Members of the IT department who were forced to wear pagers were given a pay premium on regular wages. (e.g. $1/hr or similar)
In addition, if you're called in to work, then you're paid hourly, and for a 3-hour minimum. (Travel time not included.) I think it was just a basic rate of pay (not overtime pay), but I might be mistaken.
So those are the two standards you might present to the HR department:
1. basic premium for being on-call
2. compensation when called in
Installed NT huh?
I agree, on-call equals working. At my last company, I began work as a contractor and after a few months decided to take the permanent position they offered. No matter what my status, I was always paid a fixed rate for on-call work. Everyone in the on-call rotation was given the same fixed amount for the week that they were on call, no matter how many times they were called. It seemed to work out fine.
I've had different experiences at different companies, some where worse then others. Currently(and best so far) I get $3 an hour during the week for on call, $6 an hour on the weekends or holidays. If I get paged, I get my hourly pay per each hour I'm working off hours and double time on the weekends or holidays. The worst experience was with an ISP that didn't pay on-call pay and you would be oncall for 2 or 3 weeks straight because there were only 2 people that did it. That really sucked. Hope this helps.
Huh? that's like saying if airlines or taxi companies keep mechanics on "on call" duty it's because their planes/cars are not reliable enough.
And in IT, not everyone uses stock programs. Many programs are CUSTOM WRITTEN for the client. And continually updated as new requirements arise. Software like is constantly in a beta state. And thus requires programming staff to handle bugs.
You don't say where you live but as far as the 5th circuit (LA, MS, TX) is concerned, you are SOL if your employer doesn't want to play nice.
I can't find the opinion on the 5th Circuit's web site but the cite will look something like Bright v. Houston Northwest Medical Center. Bright was on page 24/7 with a 20 minute response time. He sued for overtime, won at the district level, overturned on appeal and not accepted by the Supreme court.
Good luck.
I'm serious. I may sound like I'm being a dick, but it's true. The attitude of "I'm always on-call and can't do anything" is a direct result of trying to make yourself "too" indispensable. I'm working on getting over that myself, in fact, so I know what I'm talking about.
If you're a member of a larger team, use a rotation, if you aren't already. It may take a cycle or two for everyone to being crosstrained enough to deal with basic daily issues, but in the long run, if it's someone else's week, you can actually go out of town!
On the other hand, if you're like me, the "only" one who does specifically what you do, you still need to build up a crosstraining program with other people. Maybe you agree to pool some on-call responsibilities with other people in the same boat. The same thing will happen, after a few cycles of rotation, there will be sufficient knowledge for everyone to handle the basics.
Management doesn't give a rat's ass who's on-call, who has the knowledge, how many people it takes to fix a problem. They just want it fixed. They aren't going to care whether or not your team (by org chart or as above, by need) is on a rotation or that it's not necessarily you that's fixing their problem. All they want is to make one phone call, and it gets fixed. It's up to you and your team to adopt a way of making that happen, and yes, it is possible without having to spend all your time waiting by the phone, car keys in hand.
I am a unix admin at a big company as a contractor. I am salaried. Every 4 weeks I have to be on-call for one week. Any time I work during that week outside of my normal 8-5 Monday-Friday schedule, I am allowed to take off at some point in the next week. So if I come in on Saturday for instance, I could take Monday off. That seems like a pretty fair system to me. Also though, you can pretty much travel to whereever you want as there is an "on-call laptop" and modem that you can take with you when you are not at or near the office. That seems like a pretty reasonable system to me, and it usually isn't much of an inconvenience, until at about 1am, after 4 or 5 long islands your pager goes off, and you can barely make out the number, let alone start thinking about how to fix the problem. But, you shouldn't do that when you're on call. :)
Exactly! I work for a municiple government and am Unionized. And as luck would have it, this very topic came up in contract negotiations this last round! The Union proposed the following setup:
Two tiers: On-Call, and Incident resolution
On-Call
Techs get paid $45/day regular-workweek, $60/day weekend ($90/holiday), for each 24-hour period on-call. Duties include:
* Respond to page within 30 minutes
* Able to be on-site within 60 minutes of response to page
Incident response:
2-Hours OT-pay (or hours-worked, which ever is larger) for over-phone or remote-login resolution
4-Hours OT-pay (or hours-worked, which ever is larger) for on-site fix.
Management rejected the on-call provision on the contract. So now, thanks to the Union, those employees formerly "on-call" have taken to leaving their pagers at work. And if their managers raise havock about that, the employees can point to the contract and say, "You can't force me to take this home with me," and be right.
Sometimes, Unions are nice things.
My current employer has an interesting way of calculating oncall pay....
There are 168 hours in the week, we work in the office for 40 hours of the week ( thats covered by our regular salary ). For the other 128 hours of the week we get paid an hourly wage of 7.00 an hour, not bad for a week oncall ( and this is on top of our regular salary, but not exempt from the tax man ).
For example, you would report to work at the normal time, say 8:00. But then at quitting time, take an hour dinner break, and then come back, and then camp out in the employee lounge or something, watch TV, surf the net, play games, raid the boss's office, etc., then sleep on the couch. If the trouble call comes at midnight, you're already there, so mash the reset button then go back to sleep. The next day, wake up, leave when the next shift comes on, go home and have a day off.
This is the way it has always been done in the military, one person camps out in the headquarters building after business hours to answer phones, keep the computers up, prevent the male soldiers from raiding the female soldiers' barracks, etc., then get the next day off to do whatever; this is what's known as staff duty, or charge of quarters.
- A.P.
--
Forget Napster. Why not really break the law?
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Many companies friends have worked for have a daily rate for being on call - it seems to be pretty standard for older, bigger companies (including EDS in New Zealand).
I've had at least one employer decree I was on-call, although suince i wasn't in my contract and there was no incentive to change that (money), I told them to get stuffed.
Have a look at what unionised employees get paid - in many cases it'll be more than you. So go ahgead, stick your nose in the air and get hoity-toity about being more 733t than them. They're crying all the way to the bank.
And drug asset siezures, in the US.
Because unions reduce freedom. In most unionized industries, I cannot get a job without being forced to join a union against my will and having the union extort money from me (in the form of dues). Plus unions tend to equalize pay, so the best employees get underpaid while the worst get overpaid (and it's hard to fire unionized employees so the crappy ones never get fired either). For example, there are very few good high-school-level science teachers, because in states with teacher unions they'd be paid the exact same as oversupplied social studies teachers. A school might be willing to pay extra for a good science teacher because of the greater demand for them, but the union won't let them. Then the few scientists who do decide to teach, who could've gotten hired easily on their own, are nonetheless forced to join a union, and on top of being stuck with the union-negotiated lower pay rates, are forced to pay dues to the union. "Rights of the workers" my ass.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Strawman. That's all I've got to say here.
How so? This is what the poster wrote:
all you do when you pass regulations and whine to the government about your labor relations is make businesses more expensive to run, ergo less money to attract more employees, ergo fewer people paid less.
and before someone spews that employers are just greedy, remember that they are people too. happy employees make for a good working environment, which they like. better employees, for which they would pay more to get on their side, make for a good working environment, which they like.
Seems to me that he's got a real thing against government regulation, like corps will just do the right thing all on their own because there's always a financial incentive to do so. I think that's stupid and gave an example of why. What's your problem with that?
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
all you do when you pass regulations and whine to the government about your labor relations is make businesses more expensive to run, ergo less money to attract more employees, ergo fewer people paid less.
Actually, you also make it illegal for companies to have people working in areas that are hazardous, often needlessly hazardous, especially without fully informing them of the hazards. This prevents corporations from doing the kinds of things that many of them do (or did) all the time. Namely lying to the employees about the nature of the substances they are working with or around, or skimping on safety equipment and training for employees. Sure, sometimes this can cause problems for the corp, but it has happened many times, so liability was obviously not a bigger consideration than the cost savings of not using proper equipment and procedures, etc.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
I'm under a similar arrangement somehow. I have a set schedule, but am not compensated for when I'm called at say, 4AM because someone's stupid web site is down.
The informal arrangement is that they can call me whenever they want, 24/7 365 days/year. I will allow myself to be reachable on weekends, holidays, vacations, etc with no compensation.
In return, they understand that the time they are paying for, I may not be here! If I'm slated as an 11-7 employee and I come in at 12:30 and leave at 5pm, they can never complain.
Of course, I don't do that every day since I'd be avoiding real work that I have, but it does mean that my schedule is extremely flexible.
It'd be difficult to write this up into a formal contract, though. I just rely on them being cool. They used to complain, but once they saw what their options were, they were cool with it.
Try to make one of these deals with your employer:
You will work every day 9am to 5pm, not a minute more, not a minute less. If something comes up at 5:07pm, it's someone else's problem. They can never call you before 9am or after 5pm on weekdays, and never on weekends.
The later works better if you're a programmer since you tend to work on a deadline basis rather than a shift basis. Since you probably think about coding while laying in bed at night on the brink of sleep (maybe even pull a "Eureka!" or two), they should understand that you might be thinking of surfing while you're sitting at your desk.
I agree. In fact, my first boss here once told me, "If your pager's on... your working."
Where I work, there are two of us with the same job function. Both of us are always on call with primary response alternating by week. We get paid 1 hr for every 6 on call on days that we are normally scheduled to work (Mon-Fri) and 1 every 4 hrs on days we are not scheculed to work (weekends and holidays). That's 2hrs a day weekdays and 6 hrs on weekends. If you get called in, that's 4 hrs regular pay plus time worked in OT.
Now, this is just how we have it set up. IANAL, but I have always known my rights in California. The IWC requires employers to post the IWC's regulations in a place frequented by employees. Your state may by the same. Check out the info on their posted notices. In California, I don't believe the IWC has any regulations for on-call. I could be wrong though. The poster above had it right; contact a contract lawyer or get a paralegal to investigate whether there is any laws in your state. If there isn't and your employer really is amenable, contact other employees of similar companies and see what their compensation is. That is something HR should have been doing already.
Best of Luck
_damnit_
_damnit_
It's my job to freeze you. -- Logan's Run
you need legal advice, contact an attorney
licensed in your own jurisdiction. (and for
heavens sake, drop any notions about the law you
picked up on slashdot on the way in!)
He should definitely contact a lawyer, but what
he needs is a labor lawyer, not a contract
lawyer. I'm very well qualified as a contract
lawyer, but, unless there was a prior
relationship with the client (or unless I
expected to see enough of these coming up to make
it worth boning up on that area of the law far
more than would be justified by the fee on a
single consultation), I'd probably punt this to a
labor lawyer. If there was a prior relationship,
I'd probably hire or associate a labor lawyer.
hawk, esq.
and employees always want to take advantage of their employer. The combination works quite well together
While unions might be the answer, the fact that the workers *could* unionize is a stick on the workers side; some companies realize that they can keep a union out by treating the employees better than they could get with a union.
Unions are a huge transaction cost. There's a whole lot of room for both sides to be happy if you divvy up the costs of running the union between lower costs for management and higher wages/perks/whaterver for labor . . .
hawk, speaking as an economist this time
You say that, but in the UK speed cameras are paid for out of the fines they collect. Local government gets the money it collects in parking fines. It's not that different.
Note to slashbots: there are more computers in the world than the Linux box in your bedroom.
I could go on to name any number of industries in which the computers must not stop, otherwise blood will be shed and/or millions of dollars will be lost. Hospitals are one of them.
Sounds like when tech support at my company started making quotas and bounties for support people writing tech bulletins. Support guys were cutting and pasting stuff from the manuals and turning them into tech bulletins. Or documenting trivial features and processes.
.001% they do now.
If cops got paid by the collar, you can bet that the speeders would be pulled over at a much higher rate than the
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Our setup is a little bit different. We have 14 people who rotate a beeper, so once every 14 weeks I get to carry it and be on call 24 hours a day for a week.
For merely touching the beeper, I get 4 hours of comp time (compensation for the stress involved in being on-call, I guess).
In addition, for each and every hour I spend off-hours on beeper-related work I get an hour of comp time, and we round up the time (i.e., a five-minute support call equals an hour of comp time).
Since our beeper tends to go off 4-8 times in a typical week, I usually end up with somewhere between 8 and 12 hours of comp time for the week when all is said and done.
"Comp time" for us is unofficial vacation time. I generally use it to take a couple of half-days off during the next couple of weeks.
--
-Rich (OS/2 Warp 4 and Linux user in Eden Prairie MN)
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
At some places I've worked, and as far as I know this was per federal and state law (YMMV, IANAL, etc) since we checked it out along with HR and a wage attorney, salaried workers can be held as 'primary on-call' workers as a portion of their jobs with no added benefits or monetary compensation. Hourly workers must be paid standard rates (or overtime if by being on call they exceed the limiting number of hours) for times when they are 'primary on-call' workers, meaning that they MUST respond to a page. However, hourly workers CAN be held as 'optional' on-call workers where they can be paged in for extra work, but not paid until they report in, so long as they cannot be held accountable for not responding.
As an example, at one place of employment, an employer might require his hourly workers to stay in the building during lunch hours in case of emergency. In that case, they legally GET a lunch break as they are not on standard job activities and can go eat lunch, but it must be PAID break. So, they might work 9 hours in one shift, and the company is legally allowed to do this so long as that certain period is designated as a lunch break, so long as the hourly employee is paid for being 'on-call'.
At another place of employment, the same kind of workers can be held as 'optional' on-call workers, allowed to leave the building during lunch, and are not paid extra unless they get paged and respond. However, if they do not respond, they cannot be held accountable, as they were on a 'not on primary call' lunch break. However, if they do, they are then paid standard or overtime pay for any time normally on lunch break that was spent working on the problem.
... Just remember to stick up for yourself. Lots of folks I know in I(S|T) generate self-esteem from work, and employers are more than happy to take advantage of that by working people harder and feeding their self-worth. This is unhealthy in the long run, and actually bad for you.
;)
You should both give and demand respect from your employer, and if are OK with the work by all means do it, but don't get so wrapped up in it that you lose focus on the most important thing in your life: YOU. Self-preservation is important not only for your own sanity, but for the people around you. Nobody likes to have to deal with an overworked jerk, so don't be one
Context is everything...
Your Working Boy,
- Otis (GAIM: OtisWild)
I'm also a bit biased as I'm a former tech now on the management side of things so adjust your perspective-compensators appropriately.
There are two fundamental issues here: Planning & Job Descriptions.
Without the planning in place there's no clear procedure to follow, no resources to assure are available, no guidelines on who is to be called and under what circumstances.
Without the job descriptions done properly the Employees & the Employer are left without clarity on responsibility.
All organizations should have clear guidelines for what systems are critical and which ones are merely important. All of these systems need to have plans detailing how they are to be handled in case of failure, what resources are required (people being the pertinent resources in this case) and how they are to be called upon.
"Critical" systems need to have folks available to repair them - these folks are either required to be on site (either as part of a shift cycle, as simply their regular hours of work or "On Call") and generally involves some form of remuneration or explicit understanding with the folks keeping themselves available. This requirement must be written into a person's job description and be mutually agreed to. Simply expecting folks to make themselves available, not leave the area, etc. is unreasonable.
Yes one may be "responsible" for the regular running of a system but off-hours, weekends & vacations are just that. Without that explicit understanding (and accompanying remuneration) one is free to lead one's life regularly during off-hours.
That said there are various classes of reasons that might lead to an IS/IT employee being called in.
"Emergencies" are just that - unanticipated events with significant immediate consequences. They are not part of normal operations; if they were they'd just be "Events". These happen very rarely in IS/IT and are only really legitimate in cases like consequences from a natural disaster, serious security breaches, systems failing that are not only mission-critical but are immediately mission-critical.
Emergencies are cause for calling folks at home, expecting them to change their plans, come in & save the place. Management, both senior & middle are expected to come in and stay for the duration handling the emergency, its consequences, etc. You should expect to see at most one of these a year even if you're the sort of person who's going to get called in first if there's an emergency.
If these happen more then once a year there's a problem with your operations. Either contingency planning is lax or your folks are cutting things too close to the edge. Whatever the case there's a fundamental problem that needs to be addressed at the very top levels.
"Events" are when something happens that is unanticipated and will have serious consequences. If you've got five servers one going down is an event. If you've got 500 it's not, it's just another log-entry and following the procedure.
Events are cause for calling the folks responsible for the affected systems and inviting them in. However as there should always be a contingency plan in place for these sorts of systems and On-Call folks qualified to handle the situation, at least in the immediate term.
If one is not able to come in (and professionally one should if possible unless one is attending a funeral, caring for an ill child or some other pressing reason) then one is blameless but it would be nice to help out. By the way, an employee refusing to come in is not required to justify themselves unless there is, again, an explicit understanding regarding this sort of situation. "I am/was busy" is good & sufficient reason for an average employee to decline coming in.
Finally there simply good ole Things-That-Happen. The same as during normal operation systems fail, wires get cut, folks working off-hours have problems. Every organization generally has times of full-service and times with decreased service-levels.
It's up to Management to decide what levels of service are appropriate to what times and to assure that adequate resources are made available. This may involve folks on-site, folks on-call, or simply not offering a response 'till a later time.
There are cases, generally in poorly run places where unscrupulous management will attempt to define all issues as emergencies and expect all staff to act as on-call staff. This is of course ridiculous.
I once had a former employee told by his new employer "Emergencies happen - it's part of the job" after being called in 3-4 nights a week and at least once every weekend for several months.
These aren't "Emergencies" - they're clearly part of normal operations for the place and should be considered as such (and the management that allows such a poor state of affairs to happen should be replaced.)
What can an employee do? Insist that there be guidelines implemented. Insist that their job description be clarified. This holds true for all classes of persons: Saleried, hourly, and contracted. If one is directly contracted then make sure this is addressed in your contract. If one is sub-contracted (agency staff, whatever) then speak to the folks who issue your paycheck, get this clarified and that you're ok with it.
Frankly as I told my abused former-staffer (who was once in the middle of some long-anticipated sex when called go into work for a bogus problem, and went!) just reply that you're too drunk to come into work. That's probably not the best response but it communicates one's unavailability in spite of being reached on the phone.
Other more reasonable responses include insisting all "Emergencies" be treated as such with some sort of procedure being followed. Clearly an "Emergency" requires an follow-up investigation into it's causes, an evaluation of how the department performed, some sort of report detailing what happened & how it can be avoided / better handled in the future. This kind of investigation & documentation are anathema to a manager who's using this as an "out" & will quickly put and end to this sort of monkey business.
Another is to simply make this technique onerous on the (ir)responsible management. You get called in (in it's not legitimately part of your job, your goodwill has been exhausted) then make sure other folks suffer. Call your manager, report what you're planning to do, get permission. This is best done at 3am. Then again at 4am with a follow-up. If they're not available find something that will need authorization & follow the chain of command... Up.
Then there's simply taking the time off the next day. Called in at 2am for an hour? Come in an hour late the next day. Spent Saturday fielding phonecalls? Monday out & meetings be damned, your schedule was.
Yes this is dangerous stuff, calling the CIO at 5am is not to be done lightly. Nor is adjusting one's schedule. Indded this sort of thing can quickly lead to poor future prosdpects if not simlpe termination. However if one is well & truly being screwed it will definitely bring attention to the problem.
Frankly as a Manager I've sometimes instituted the policy that for every call-in the person's Supervisor be called also. This generally provides a great deal of incentive not to abuse folks and makes robust planning much more attractive. Other policies that work are the full-invstigation & report as noted above.
Finally, try and be flexible. Yes there are times that one will likely be called on above & beyond the usual call of duty. A good employer will respect their employees and show appreciation. Try and give the benefit of the doubt and assume that this will be the case & that some good will come of what's happening. If not, well start shopping that resume.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
My advice can only come from my own perspective. In any job, I insist that the duties are specifically detailed and known in advance. I do not put up with open-ended assignments, or requests to work outside of normall business hours which are brought up less than two weeks in advance. After all, I notify my employer two weeks before I intend to take vacation, or resign. If your job consists of monitoring operations at certain times of the day, week, or month, I would simply require that all those hours spent monitoring operations be compensated at the hourly rate. If you have to be on-call but not actively working, bill those hours at a reduced rate, but bill them just the same.
Tech workers who put up with a lot of BS should get paid for it. Auto mechanics and welders leave their work behind at 5:00 spot on, their brains synchronized precisely to the atomic clock of the Naval Observatory. The electricians and builders who work in my building work, by my honest observation, 2 hours per day. They certainly can't be reached outside of the 9:00-15:00 time window. If your employer wants you to spend your entire life at work, you should either say no or get paid accordingly.
I was a salaried employee at one place, and as part of downsizing they decided that developers should take part in tech support. So we took turns carrying a beeper. No compensation, just the laudable privilege of helping out our employer. Now I always make sure to make that a negotiating point -- if they won't put a "no beepers" clause in the contract, it means extra money.
Just junk food for thought...
I work for a LARGE IT house. I am oncall 7/24 2 weeks out of 10. Thye group I work for has arrived at that so we are NOT on-call all the time for our own systems. The standard recompense it comp-time. We normally receive 4 hours for responding to a call. This accounts for the 02:30 call that wakes you up until 05:00. The company expects a response with 15 minutes to a sub-set of critical systems and 2 hours for the rest. When I first started we were on-call for the 30 or so systems we were each responsible ALL THE TIME and IT SUCKED. We gathered all the sysadmins together and worked out this deal amongst us, along with an emergency call list, for help. Much of this depended on the fact that our director was/is an old operations guy who is sympathetic to our cause, without his patronage we'd probably be in the old boat on-call all the time. The life of a unix sysadmin DOES have its downsides :)
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
I used to get an extra 15 hrs/wk pay for on-call time in addition to any hours worked. In other words, during an on-call week I would get paid for 55 hours even if I did not get a call. If I worked a call, those hours would be added to the 55. We all rotated with one person on-call each week, but were allowed to exchange or pass on our on-call duties to someone else on the crew if they wanted some extra cash.
NULL
--
I am an RN and When I choose to take a call shift, I get $2.50 an hour for each hour that I am tied to my cell phone. If called in, I get double time. While this is not the IT/IS industry, I do know that the hospital IS/IT people get the same deal. As an added bonus, since call is a requirement for the job, I get to write off a portion of my cell phone bill.
Call the Social Security office, explain your
concern in terms of the amount of the SS
"contribution" versus your hours. If there
is any discrepancy between the hours you
worked and the amount of social withheld,
the Atty General of your state might become
very interested in matters.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
This is a labor law violation. As an engineer
working on salary I am free after hours. For
people paid hourly the laws are clear that
after 40 hours you must get overtime pay.
Keep in mind though that people who sue
their employer rarely get hired when new
potential employers find out about it.
You should look for another job if you can't
convince your employer to treat you correctly.
Bringing lawyers into this may just hurt
your future employment. Most employers will
have nothing to do with employees who sue
their employer.
IANAL: In a past job I worked which was fulltime but no explicit contract this is what I discovered for my state (FL).
If the company limits your travel while on call then they must compensate you for this.
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
What do you mean? Maybe i'm just dumb... =)
This is how I understnad you:
you work for XXX amount. If the client wants you to carry a pager, they pay (1.25)XXX ???
If you do come in after hours you charge (1 + extra overtime percentage)XXX???
Please... Enlighten me... This sounds interesting.
-Andy
damn... that makes almost too much sense... I might start using that idea. So you're banking regardless. =)
-Andy
I also work for a fortune 100 company and our agreement to our customer is a response back to them for severe outages within 15 minutets, 24x7. We get paid for two extra hours every weekday and 3 extra hours every weekend day that we have the pager, whether it ever goes off or not. If we DO end up getting paged, we get additional pay for the time spent with the customer. We rotate the pager throughout the team as well so no one's on call for more than a week at a time.
As a matter of fact, this past weekend I got paged at 3:00am and was on the phone with the customer for the next twelve hours! Thank god for that extra pay!
Hope this helps.
That's a very nice Rah, Rah, look for the union label rant you have going there, Publicus, but the fact remains that we are not talking about unionized tradesmen (which I think is generally a very good idea, particularly for miserable, dangerous and thankless work like mining and such) but unionized techies. And we aren't talking about changes brought about by organized labor during the industrial revolution, we're talking about working in a nasty, cut-throat market during a market decline.
I've worked both as a unionized techie and as a non-unionized one and I'm happy to say that despite (or perhaps because) of the possible threat of layoffs with a meager severance package, everyone I work with seems to take more pride in their work and generally has a much better attitude. In the union shop where I worked there were routine fights about things (I shit you not) like who had "the good pencil tray" (that one lasted two days) and how evil this one manager was for giving a poor performance review to someone, even though it had absolutely no impact on their pay.
Yes, some unions are good and are still very necessary to maintain an acceptable standard of living, but not in in the tech sector. All they accomplish there is encouraging sloth and complacancy and if you don't believe that, go work for the government as a techie and see for yourself.
-Joe
Well, if the movie Serpico is accurate, at the time (early 1970s) cops went home after they made an arrest. Street cops were expected to make one arrest a shift, no more no less..
So now, thanks to the Union, those employees formerly "on-call" have taken to leaving their pagers at work. And if their managers raise havock about that, the employees can point to the contract and say, "You can't force me to take this home with me," and be right.
And so, the taxpayers of that community get crappy service from their employees. But that doesn't bother you, because you're Union.
-
That's not his problem. It's his employer's.
No, it's the customers' problem.
-
Should the IT workers also make coffee for the taxpayers if their employers tell them to?
Absolutely. Those taxpayers pay your salary, and ultimately your job is to do what they think you should do.
If you don't like it, don't work for them. Choosing to work for the government carries a responsibility, because the government is of the people and for the people; the people are not for the government.
-
the customers can go elsewhere if they are unhappy with the service provided by his employer.
If you think people should leave their homes if they don't like the service they get from their government, you have bought into a very screwed up view of who works for whom in that relationship.
The US isn't about government on the people, to the people, and through the people, and taxpayers don't get to take their business elsewhere without leaving their homes. They're forced to pay for the service, literally at gunpoint (since if you don't pay your taxes, you'll wind up being forced to by the courts, and if you refuse, you'll be taken to jail by armed police officers.)
If the service is crappy, you can't just hang up the phone and dial a new company. Government IT employees who refuse to accept pages to fix after-hours problems are not just screwing their employers, they're screwing their friends, families, and neighbors.
The next morning when the DMV computers are down during the day because they weren't fixed the night before, it'll be their third grade gym teacher out there standing in line an extra two hours, or their high school sweetheart, or their dear old grandmother.
When you say "yeah, stick it to the man!", the man you're sticking it to is you; your tax dollars are paying for that, too. Ironically, so are the tax dollars of the Union stooges doing the malingering.
-
Sounds like the RICO laws down in the states.
Count your blessings my friend. Many "On Call" individuals that I know are salaried. That means that no matter how many pages you answer and how many hours you work you are paid the same amount.
When I want your opinion I will beat it out of you.
It'd sure make sense for management to offer this. Since doing so usually takes away the possiblilty of overtime pay. Then compensating for after-hours support calls is likely to not happen. It usually sounds like this: ``After all, you understood that there'd be occasional after hours support required...'' Yah, right. But please define ``occasional''. I got that line several jobs ago. In those days ``occasional'' meant just about every night since some developer could always get some xylocephalic vice president to OK putting something into production without adequate testing. Can't tell you how many times I was dialed-in at midnight fixing problems and required to be in the office by 7:30 the next morning. And don't ask: ``But what about comp time?'' The typical response was: ``I can't let you do that. We're running a business around here, you know.'' Like I said, this was several jobs ago.
--
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Well, that doesn't seem to bother airline pilots, physicians in some areas of the U.S., and even college faculty The common denominator seems to be that the unions pop up in support of vocations where managements feels that need to attempt to coerce employees to do more and more work without the proper compensation.
I'd bet that many of the bad feelings that many people have regarding unions have to do with the pressures by their locals to vote as a block in elections, not-so-subtle suggestions that the members make campaign contributions to candidates that the members don't support, and other forms of corruption. If those could be avoided (fat chance, though, IMHO), I'd bet that more people would favor union membership. (And lest you think I'm some bleeding heart liberal, the preceding comments come from an avowed anti-unionist.)
--
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Our company used to have many varied policies depending on department/etc.. Two or three years ago they went through, reviewed all policies and came up with a system to impliment company wide (this was with much employee input).
Our on call policy looks something like this:
For each day you are on-call you receive one hour of additional regular-time pay.
For each holiday or weekend day you are on-call you receive two hours per day of regular-time compensation.
If you are called past the first 1/2 hour you receive overtime for phone calls, this first half hour is assumed to be within the regular on-call compensation amount. This helps to absorb the 2 minute phonecalls that people sometimes receive.
Call-Out (if you are dispatched) pay is paid at regular overtime rates with a 2 hour minimum.
So, anyway, thats our policy in short..
-Alan
Well, the same issue came up at my job. We talked with management and agreeded to be paid for at least one hours worth of work at time and a half. Even if it is a 3 min call to answer some stupid question, I get 1.5 hours worth of pay. If the task takes more than an hour, I remain getting paid 1.5 times the normal rate.
It isn't that great, but I think it is fair...
-John
---
Sig Return: 204 No Content
If you think $7/hour is worth your time being on call in an IT job you need to work on your self esteem. I'd gladly give my employer $7/hour to leave me alone when I'm not in the office.
There are plenty of strong union sectors in the US still. The auto industry is doing fine. Teachers, government employees, and professional athletics are all strong labor industries. Its not likely to happen in the IT industry, but that's because we're elitist snobs.
...
--
I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations
And I'd be a Libertarian, if they weren't all a bunch of tax-dodging professional whiners.
Berke Breathed
OK, all these people talking about lawyers are off-topic. The guy just wanted to know how everyone else working in IT is treated. Put your lawyer back in its holster and calm down.
I'm a contractor at one of the big telcos in north america. They follow some business practices set down as standard by GTE, so what I describe is probably common to many big companies and this should give you an idea of how the rest of us are treated.
Here are the rules regarding being "on-call" as they were described to me:
Basically you should be paid a little something because they are asking you to do something for them outside your normal duties; they are asking you to stay alert and ready and to restrict your life to not include activities that would prevent you from doing your "on-call duties" at a moments notice. Where I work they pay you an hour of overtime just for being on-call even if you don't get called. If you get called, you just get over-time pay for the time you work (1 hour minimum). On the weekends you get paid a bit more because the company is asking a bit more to restrict your activities on the weekend!
There are also rules where I work about how long someone can be on call (two weeks max before another employee has to become the "on-call" person).
"Standard" union dues are 2.6% of your salary. So, if they could negotiate a 10% raise for you, you'd still come up ahead of the game.
// mlc, user 16290
--
Doctors rotate being on call, they're too important for a hospital to make them stay by the pager 24/7. Techs at hospitals are the same way, they rotate their schedule. Techs get paid by the hour during the day, and don't get paid for being on call until they have to come in - then they get at least 2 hours pay, even if the procedure takes 10 minutes. But that's just one specific hospital where I worked, I'm not sure if they all do it that way. Nonetheless, it would be a good system for IT/IS departments to use.
== Paul Rickard, Editor of The Microsoft Boycott Campaign ====
I like:
cats$ chown -R us:us yourbase/
The standard I've seen for companies where I work is that "on call" hours are paid at about 20-25% of normal hours, and there is a minimum call-out time of 3 hours.
Thus if I'm on a salary equivalent to $25/hr, when "on call" I'd be paid equivalent to $5/hr. On the weekends, that goes up to about $7/hr. After all, when you're "on call", you can't do what you want with your time (go fishing, see a movie).
The minimum call-out time means that even if a problem only takes 15 minutes to fix, I'd still be paid 3 hours - though I'm also expected to spend that time in the office, perhaps catching up on other stuff and waiting to see if the repaired system keels over again.
In my experience though, the hardest part about being on-call is not solving the "how much do I get paid" question - it's having a partner who realises that he/she is relegated to second place behind work.
One good way to spend all those on-call hours: type (or scan) all the software documentation into encrypted files, preferably ones that can only be read by non-standard applications.
Then, shred the originals.
Use these files (on the sly, of course) to become the sole office expert on all the vital applications. Instant job security.
Of course, any chance at a vacation instantly goes out the window....
I'm personnally not paid for being on call. I simply get the hours I work on emergency off the next week, or something similar.
Being paid by the hour, it would only be appropriate that you are paid when you're on call, perhaps on a reduced $$/hour. That's what was happening at my previous place of employment.
You'd bill overtime rates even if you didn't actually work 40 hours? My understanding (IANAL) is that overtime kicks in when actual hours of labor exceeds 40/week or 8/day (depending on local law), irrespective of your flat hour rate.
Is this a money grab? Or do you think you deserve time and a half after working 8 hours in a week?
Kevin Fox
--
Kevin Fox
In a company where I am a consultant the rate is 33% of the normal hourly pay for being on call. If anything happens during the shift: 200% of the normal hourly pay.
So: 24 hours on call will pay the same amount as 8 hours regular work. And 4 hours emergency work also pays the same as 8 hours regular work.
look at how doctors have to be on call and serve a residency that means they have to work 18 hr shifts and are continually on call for a few YEARS... all while being paid CRAP
Give me a break. The average US Doctor's salary is over $190,000. So what if you have put in a residency, the payoff is BIG.
Way back when, we had the following structure
1 week pager duty, on rotation paid 8 hours extra.
Any calls you got on that paid a minimum of 3 hours (which is minimal call-back pay in Quebec).
The year I worked there, my OT pay was 1.5 time bigger then my regular pay.
Marriage is considered capital punishment for the theft of a goat in some third world countries...
Obviously AYBABTU began life as a UNIX meme...
Play Well
the state of california has a law on the books that states (IANAL so bear with me) in essence, that if you show up on a job site in any capacity and do work you are entited to 4 hours pay, minimum. If you exceed 8 hours in a day you get OT, 12 or more in a day gets you double time. the old "you know i have to bill for 4 hours of OT if i show up there" bit usually puts off all but the most critical issues, as by rights it should. sure i'll fix the mail server on sunday, but if your $mailapp is broken on saturday you'd better pay the piper or get over it.
use Signature::Witty;
My experience with almost the same situation, is that any employees that were "on call" automatically got paid an hourly wage while they were on call (it wasn't their normal pay, it could be anywheres from 1/4 - 1/2 of their normal wage). And then anytime a situation arose that they had to respond to, or come into the office, they got extra. Minimum of an hour (even if it takes less than that), with an additional extra if it occurs over the weekends...
I've seen a few ways of doing this.
The one which I though was the most fair, was a setup I had at a company a few years back.
When on-call, you'd get an hourly rate for incidents. The smallest increment was 1 hour, with a 4 hour base. In other words if it took me 30 mins to resolve a problem, I'd get to bill for 4 hours.
If it took me 4.5 hours to fix a problem, I would get to bill for 5 hours.
Additionally, you got 8 hours "for free" for carrying the phone per week. It's not really "free" as is mentioned in the article header, but it seemed enough.
On a good week, you'd get 8 hours to haul around a cellphone. On a bad week you'd easily be able to get 40+ hours of overtime while working about 8.
Seemed fair to me.
I'm sorry did you say forced? were you handcuffed or physically restrained, if so please contact you local law enforcement. Otherewise quit complaining, you can quit at (nearly) anytime in most fo the US.
Now as for a union, that's fine just so long as I don't *have* to belong to your union and pay dues for things I really disagree with. I'm not trying to pass a law so that you can't eat hotdogs because they have lots of preservitives, so kindly do create a union to tell me where/when/how I can or can't work.
Why, I'd certainly love for a union to negotiate a 10% pager carrying bonus for me in exchange for a mere 20% of my salary in union dues! Why didn't I think of that before!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Until fairly recently I was working for a large Australian company that required 24x7 support of some for many of its systems. (In fact it could get very dangerous for some of the blue-collar guys if the computer systems went down)
Anyhow, fortnightly or non-salaried staff used to get 5% of their hourly wage for every hour they had to carry a pager. They also got paid overtime rates for any call-outs. In exchange for this, the employee was not to leave town, get drunk etc.
There was also a rule where an employee couldn't spend more than 2 weeks out of every three on call (this was often bent though)
Salaried employees on the other hand ended up with $50 for every time they got called. Salaried employees in a support role usually received a higher salary than developers though.
(Incidentally, I should also say that the questioner's state may have state wage-and-hour laws that are more generous than the federal laws. Whether this is so naturally depends on the state.)
In the USA, the Fair Labor Standards Act requires (1) that hourly workers be paid for hours worked and (2) that they be paid overtime for hours worked in excess of 40. The obvious question is how "on call" time fits into this system.
The Department of Labor's FLSA regulations, particularly this one, suggest that "on call" time doesn't count as work time for purposes of the FLSA. (If the employee is actually called, however, that would seem to be different -- see this regulation.)
This recent opinion from Wisconsin involving EMTs "on call" discusses a very close case, and is interesting.
Observation: You should not be an hourly employee
Salary is not any better. It may seem like a good idea but in most companies salaried employees do not get any compensation for working excess hours. You get paid the same weather you work the 35-40 hours required or 70.
Honestly, what is really expected here? You are a salaried employee and feel that you are not being compensated fairly, correct? Well there's only one way to find out if you're right - let the Market decide!
Quit. If another company is willing to pay what you want, then you were right. If not, then you weren't. Why do people have so much trouble with this concept? Ok, let's spell it out even clearer:
Your services (no matter how good you may be) are only worth what someone else is willing to pay for them. No more! And if you happen to get paid less it's your own damn fault.
... only mostly kidding -- as a contractor particularly you'll see alot of this (the situation described seems very contractor-ish) ... i've experienced it for several years and only recently have discovered the worse arena of salaries. anyway -- there are ways around the pager -- i've lost more pagers than i care to remember due to inconvenient timing of their going off (mid-drink some friday night -- pager explodes against brick-barroom-wall/hunting -- pager explodes in a skeet-shooting "accident") -- and oddly enough my bosses understood ...
just my experience.
Heh, by the time they get done filling out all the paperwork after an arrest, it's usually time to go home anyways. =P
----
Dave
MicrosoftME®? No, Microsoft YOU, buddy! - my boss
- Dave
According to the Copenhagen interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, it is in a superposition of states comprised of "gone off" and "not gone off" until a measurement operator is applied. That is, until someone listens to it.
Re-phrasing the question may be of benefit:
What are the standards of practice for on-call duty?
Are you compensated for time on-call, or only for the time actually needed to respond to an emergency?
If you are paid for time on-call, what is the rate?
I don't know if it is required, but the telecom company that I work for pays by the day for being on call, plus wages for any call-ins that occur.
Another situation required sysadmins to be phonable (not merely pageable)--they required that the sysadmin had a cell phone. Amazingly, they refused to pay the cell bill.
--The basis of all love is respect
I've run into a place where you were assigned and not rotated. That is, you would be on call for months at a time.
It was generally conceded that this setup blew industrial strength chunks...
--The basis of all love is respect
Of course, you are hourly, so this may or may not work for you. But give it a try, maybe. For us salary employees, we each get a turn on the on-call pager. We have to carry it and be responsible for pages 24/7, for seven days. Then, we hand the pager over to the next guy.
...and the compensation? We get Friday off.
...and how was it handled? Rather than our bosses going and negotiating with HR (pointless), they handled it on their own. We stay at home, but as far as the bean counters know, we were here the full day.
Might work well for your situation, too. Depends on your management.
I do network engineering at a decent sized international company, and we have a two-tier on call structure. People who are on call all of the time get 10% of their monthly salary as a shift differential. People who are on call one week a month get 6% of their monthly salary as a shift differential. If you spend more than 3 hours in during off-hours or the weekend, you can usually get some comp time for it. Most of us are pretty happy about it.
I am the king... of No Pants! www.penny-arcade.com
OK, this may be OT but it wouldn't be a safe world at all. as the police arrest more people, you are saying there will be less crime. i'll give you that point. so there is less crime. but the cops still need to make a living wage so they will either start arresting for small infractions or planting evidence and booking people for non existant crimes.
doesn't sound too safe to me.
ej
as this discussion came up before here.
DataSquid.net, a little about me.
whoever's on call gets this:
25 dollars a day for weekdays
50 dollars a day for weekends
100 (plus daily amount) for any issue that requires you to come into work
we're not the biggest of companies, so the odds of us being needed on the weekend are slim, so the amount isn't a whole lot. but, it's better than nothing. we still have a few bugs to work out though, this just started.
A few years ago, I knew some guys who worked as hourly student interns at a Motorola facility. They would have one on-call person at a time, and he would get 1/10th of his hourly for each hour on call, and full pay for each hour he worked if he got called in on something.
:)
Needless to say, everyone wanted to be on-call so they could get paid for sitting around.
I don't know of this is still their policy, but it is an alternative you can bring to your employer as an option for compensating on-call personnel.
Or you can just suck it up and deal like the rest of us
I think the problem is, yes, you are restricted, but you're not really working either. You can still go have dinner with your girlfriend, go to a movie, whatever. If you get called in, you're being paid for your interupted time. If not, it's not like you weren't able to enjoy your weekend.
Granted, you can't go out of town, and you can't drink or do drugs, but you're on call. This is part of your work responsibility, and you trade those few things you can't do for the oppourtunity to make a few extra bucks on the weekend.
You say your company is willing to work -- maybe you can get them to cave and pay you for the whole time you're on call. If you're hourly, they'll have to pay you time and a half for any hours over 40, though. Sweet gig if you can swing it. I don't know anyone that has, though.
Talk to a lawyer. $150US will be wisely spent here.
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When the Employer requires an employee to be available on stand-by during off duty hours, an employee shall be compensated at the rate of one-half (1/2) hour for each four (4) hour period or portion thereof for which he has been designated as being on stand-by duty.
...
An employee on stand-by duty who is required to report for work shall be paid, in addition to the stand-by pay, the greater of:
(a) the applicable overtime rate for the time worked;
or
(b) the minimum of three (3) hours' pay at the applicable rate for overtime; except that this minimum shall only apply once during a single period of eight (8) hours' stand-by duty.
---
First, if you're paid hourly, they're definitely taking advantage of you. You need to fight. It's so obvious, it almost doesn't need a lawyer.
Second, even if you are salaried, you still should fight. Why should all your weekends be hosed? You should be paid additional time for this.
If the company has problems with this, get a quote from a professional monitoring company to see what they would charge to monitor your IT systems overnight and on weekends. You'll find that it is huge $$.
http://slashdot.org/askslashdot/00/10/17/184422
Has anything changed recently to mandate the reposting?
Skip ------ See the latest from http://www.anArchyFortWorth.com
It's 11:39 am, Monday, and I'm on my 75th hour since Friday morning last week. Ain't it grand... Ctimes2
My cube. My friend. My solace. My prison.
god yes ... i was traveling from chicago to minneapolis this weekend. must have been a slow month for the cops in wisconsin. lord have mercy, there were cops every 200 yards.
Mindy: "Well...desserts aren't always right." Homer: "But they're so sweet!"
The cost of the call-outs is just as important as the the compensation it provides to the employees, because it provides a feedback mechanism to the employers that provides incentive to fix the underlying problems.
ie "Why are these call-outs costing me a fortune?"
Unfortunately, the knee-jerk reaction seems to be to find a way to not pay the callees rather than reducing the call-outs, either by instituting a second shift, if appropriate, or fixing minor resourcing problems.
I realise that's not always possible to reduce the number of calls, but in a lot of cases I've seen, it certainly is.
I worked for an outsourcing organisation where a particular customer's servers were chronically short of disk space. They wouldn't spend the money to install more, so we were constantly struggling with it. Our company *did* pay extra to be on call but *didn't* pay per call. As a result, the problems never showed up on any bottom line and were still a problem when I left.
How many callouts are due to inadequate disk space?
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$ find
I did some work for an ISP recently and while I wasn't one of their on-call people, I saw how they were handling the on-call situation.
Here's what they did: you would work your regular shift and then go home and be on-call. If you received a call/page sometime that night, you'd have to take care of that problem. As soon as you received the call/page, you could put down 2 hours on your timesheet for time worked. However, any other calls you received within that two hour period would count against that same 2 hour block.
So ideally, you get a call at 1 a.m., fix the problem in 5 minutes, and cha-ching, 2 hours go on the timesheet and you go back to bed. Then at 3:05am, you get another call that takes 5 minutes to fix and cha-ching, 2 more hours on the timesheet and more beauty sleep.
Of course, in a worst case scenario, you'd get non-stop calls for two (or three or four) straight hours.
The final piece of this on-call puzzle is that the manager insisted the on-call employees get at least 8 hours of sleep after their last call. So if you took your last call at 4 a.m., they wouldn't expect you in the office until 12 p.m.
How about if you don't like the laws of your country, stop whining, move to another country. If no country meets your needs, start your own country on some uninhabited island!
If you don't like being defrauded, it's all your stupid fault. If you don't like it when someone breaks into your house, it's your stupid fault for not having enough security equipment. What - you don't own a gun? How do you expect to blow suspected criminals away if you don't have a gun??
If you don't like it when people break a contract, it's your stupid fault for trusting that they would keep to it anyway. If you don't like what someone says on Slashdot - including this comment - stop whining, don't read Slashdot. No one is forcing you to read it!
But, let's go further. Why don't we say to women who have been raped, if you don't like being raped you shouldn't have worn that short skirt? - Oh no, wait, some people do actually say that! After all, it's just evolutionary biology - any fool can see that Darwinism proves conclusively that the rapist is just acting out natural instincts and is therefore forgivable, whereas the woman who has been raped is, er, just wearing a short skirt to attract men, which is a natural thing to do... No wait... I think I got mixed up there somewhere. Anyway, the Taliban have the right idea - no provocative clothing.
Let's take it further. If you don't like being abused by your father, why don't you run away from home. If you don't like your babies being born with horrible deformities due to depleted uranium in the area, well, you shouldn't have been stupid enough to live there, should you?
If you are poor you are obviously too stupid to advance. Everyone in America can be as rich as Bill Gates through hard work, therefore the poor are just lazy and it's all their own fault. Simple logic. Any protestor who denies this is obviously a window-smashing Neanderthal. And if you don't like racism you obviously shouldn't have been born black - why don't you just get cosmetic surgery like Michael Jackson has, and quit whining!
This is the whole idea of "libertarianism" - blame the victim. The victim is always at fault, if the victim ever complains they are a "whiner"! (Except if the victim is rich, then they are a noble entrepeneur, "creating wealth". Even complaining about having to pay workers 20 cents more, or reducing CO2 emmissions by a tiny fraction, isn't "whining", it's... well, it's not "whining", anyway. I can't quite figure out that discrepancy. I think it must be some kind of unwritten rule of "libertarianism".)
So why won't the lot of you just quit whining!?
Including you so-called "libertarians" - you're the worst, selfish, spoilt brat whiners of them all!! Why don't you just move to another country if you hate the so-called "socialist" practices of the federal government so much and quit whining!
Hey, did you ever notice - "quit whining" might be taken as an extremely offensive flame. Well fancy that! I always thought it was a rational, objective assessment. Hey, you - I know your lover has just died because of an accident on the job, and you would like the government to prosecute those people directly responsible for manslaughter - but come on, get over it! Won't you just QUIT WHINING!
all you do when you pass regulations
What, like safety regulations which prevent deaths at work?
and whine to the government about your labor relations is make businesses more expensive to run, ergo less money to attract more employees, ergo fewer people paid less.
And I suppose the fact that less people will die on the job - if the laws are enforced, which they frequently aren't - means nothing to you? Remember, if unemployment is high in a given sector, so-called "low-skilled" workers are easy and cheap to replace if they happen to accidentally die. That's why safety standards are so low in sweatshops in many countries.
And, er... minimum wage laws? They're not going to make people be paid less! (excluding illegal wage levels and legal loopholes). I really don't think you can argue that.
Female Prison Rape in NY
management is more than willing to work with us.
:)
You almost had me fooled up until that line...
C'mon, editors, April fools has been gone for nearly a month now... LET IT GO!
I'm surprised managment rejected this, unless they were worried about setting a precedent for other workers. It's a pretty good deal for the city:
about $2.50/hr for pager coverage. That's less than 10% of the normal pay ~$30/hr.
I just expect it. Once you reach a certain level in the Network/Sys Admin field you are always on call...you may not be the primary on call person but you are ALWAYS on call.
At my current job we do a rotating shift that lasts two weeks. I don't get paid any extra for being "the" on-call person during that time. But, if I take a call for ANY reason I bill an hour, whether it took 2 mins or 59mins.
Luckily, we get VERY few off hours calls. The management here knows we aren't a 24/7 operation and makes sure that others know as well. If I got paged frequently after hours I'd definately be fighting for a "bonus" when on call.
. . . and that sort of inconvenience is directly related to the level of salary compensation they get, which is substantial let us not forget.
That depends on your point-of-view. I'm sure that somebody who flips burgers could say the same thing about IT/IS folks.
'I ain't a liar, baby, and I ain't proud I just want what I'm not allowed.' -- Violent Femmes, 36-24-36
The old 'Us vs Them' Mentality is the 1st sign your company is going down the tubes...
Back in my days of 'on call', the engineers/SEs had the option to either take a day off (during normal business hours, your still on call) the week they were on call, or get a day with pay.
In either instance, there was always SOME kind of compensation. As soon as 'enlightened, experienced' managment took over, this practice was quickly halted, followed by the Brite Sizing of the company.
I notice today they finaly filed for chapter 11. There is a god.
Apparently you work in a business where (nearly) all work is contract work at the customers site. Maybe you and some coworkers should think about opening your own business. Without knowing the kind of work it's difficult to know if you or the customers need the security of a large corporation backing you up, or if your line of work is bound to your employer by other means. But i think it's worth thinking through, especially if your employers rely haevily on your and your coworkers qualifications, as it often is in IT.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
If you think that you deserve extra pay, demand it. .. um .. emergency.
My boss just e-mailed me a message asking for my home phone number; my first thought was to tell him to go F himself, but I like my job, so I told him that, "I never give my home phone number to any job, ever. You can have my cellphone number though: ###-###-####."
I usually don't answer my phone, if I don't recognise the number. Plus, it is not in my contract to be on-call, even in the case of an
--
microsoft, it's what's for dinner
bq--3b7y4vyll6xi5x2rnrj7q.com
it's a sig, wtf?
This is just not true. Any custom software system should have a developer on call whenever there is a sysadmin on call. The sysadmin needs someone to call if there is a problem with the application. Even the most reliable software will occasionally have problems, even if only due to other system failure.
For instance, "The archive log destination filled up, and Oracle hung, so there are 300 wedged application processes, how to I unwedge them safely".
The place I used to work, we had a "development pager" that we passed around and the sysadmin/DBA could page if they needed to. I got beeped usually no more than once a month, unless we were doing a software upgrade and the developers forgot to tell the sysadmins about something. Also, our DBA sucked, and I was better at Oracle than him, so if he was stumped, he would call me.
The way we handled on-call time was pretty informal, but it worked for the low volume of calls we had. We were all on salary, so, we would pass the pager around between three of us, and if someone wanted to go out of town for the weekend, they would just pass it off. If the call volumes were higher, I would have wanted something more rigid, but this wasn't bad.
The sysadmins were also salaried, but I believe their contracts stipulated a certain amount of on call time. They didn't get bonus pay for answering calls, which they probably should have. Also, as sysadmins left for greener pastures, the remaining ones ended up with more on-call time.
As a former manager, I got a $100.00 lump sum for the oncall guy (weekend only) and then he got whatever hours he worked. If no hours, he still got the $100.00. It's not a perfect setup, but the guys liked it and management bought it.
I was always salaried and on-call. We didn't get paid for getting called in. Some jobs had beepers that went of constantly. I finally started looking for jobs where on-call was not a requirement.
That fixed the problem.
If you aren't part of the solution, there is good money to be made prolonging the problem
Danger, Will Robinson! Push that button and the suits will just put you on salary. They prefer that anyway. Just be glad you actually get paid more for doing on-call support.
tora
We had a long discussion of this topic, since the existing arrangement was not fair. The resulting arrangement wasn't fair either, but somewhat less so.
We had both salaried and hourly employees in our department. By and large, only the managers were salaried. I was an exception.
The tech staff were required on a rotating basis to carry the pager and cell phone for evening/weekend support. We were finally able to settle things for the hourly workers, so that there was a stipend for the week in which it was your turn (I think it was $150 just to carry the stuff around), and if you were required to respond to a call, you billed your actual time. If you had to come on site, you billed a minimum of three hours.
We never did work out the deal for the salaried ones (me, that is), but as you were allowed to trade off, it was just a matter of asking everyone else "Who wants $150?" and I never had a problem finding a volunteer.
http://drteknikal.blogspot.com/
"Unions can happen here because of free speach, freedom of association, and freedom of contract. Logically, if you're for the latter, you must acknowlege the former."
Simply untrue. If one employee doesn't show up to work I can fire him. But if all my employees don't show up to work this is a 'strike' and I am legally forbidden from firing them. This is a violation of freedom of contract and was recognized as such by the Supreme Court before King Roosevelt blackmailed them with his court-packing plan.
This might help out; in most states, if there's a restriction on your movements & your behavior, you probably should be getting paid for each and every hour you're on duty.
http://www.nolo.com/encyclopedia/articles/emp/onca ll.html
Whatever you do... don't read this.
Most tech workers have this weird notion that they couldn't be union members for some reason. There's been this mis-information that if you went to college, or you don't come home from work dirty that you can't be a Union member.
:)
But look at what you are doing - compare that to what a skilled worker in a factory does. It is virtually the same thing. But because one person wears jeans and a work shirt and the other wears a tie, they think they have nothing in common.
I'm serious about this. You are in the same postition as an average factory worker - where you are expected by the bosses to do things and not be compensated fairly. It's time for tech workers to get together and help each other out. It will make all of our lives better.
We don't hire people, or fire people, or make decisions on pay and raises. You're a worker, just the same as a person in a steel mill or a person making clothes. Your tools are computers instead of hammers or CAD/CAM driven lathes.
Ok, I'll get off the soap box now.
What do people think? Why no big tech union?
You're quite right. /. is not the place to ask for legal advice. The thing is though, the poster wasn't asking for legal advice. He was asking for other IT professionals to share their experience and pay structures.
If he's looking for contract advice, I'd say "Talk to a lawyer." If he's asking for shared experience, I'd say:
"Depending on what company I was working for, the On-Call person would get a premium of between $50 and $250 a week to carry the duty pager."
That's not legal advice. That's a shared experience - what he was asking for...
Never attribute to malice what can as easily be the result of incompetence...
I work for a certain Telecommunications/IT company that has 50k+ employees. In case of these On-call duties, it's quite normal to get the 60% of your normal hourly wage. Which is nice. So, let's say you get 100 per hour. Since you are On-call, all the time outside your normal workhours (which, in Finland, is 24 - 8 = 16) counts towards those 60%. Therefore, you make 16 * 60 = 960 per day. Which is fair, sicne you have to keep your mobile phone all the time with you, you can NOT go to theaters/cinema/football (well, at least here you are supposed to turn off your mobile in these places), most likely you can not go tracking (unless you have broadband wireless access, or you are sure you don't have to access some host remotely), and even spending intimate moments with your loved ones can be interrupted. On-call means you HAVE TO answer the call. :o)
Usually you have to deal with people who don't understand what you're saying, or you don't understand their accent, or the call drops, or you just happened to having had a shower and the water is dropping in the phone
And when you can't solve the problem, and have to escalate, oh, that's when the fun begins: is the next one in the escalation ladder actually aware of his/her position, is he/she available/willing to take the case/competent/pissed off? What if you have to escalate even further?...
This just to illustrate how painful On-call can (always) sometimes be, and that you should be paid fairly for it.
One more thing: week-ends and national holidays count as double the rate, that is, 120%. Christmas and New Year are FOUR times (240%) the normal amount, and that's very nice.
This, of course, in a country where workers have a lot of rights and protection. I dunno about USA. Still, don't sell your ass too cheap.
Sigged!
Much better advice:
Shave off all of your hair, and go aquire a Nazi SS uniform. Go into your manager's office and demand a pay raise. Threaten him if nessessary. You may want to bring a firearm in case in order to better handle a potential situtation.
Someone you trust is one of us.
i work for a large dod/government contracting company in one of their it services divisions. there are 8 people in my group. we rotate shifts every week but get paid 20% more for two weeks. something to do with it being easier for payroll to calculate or something. hope that helps a little.
You see a problem, I see potential. - Vincent 'Vinnie' Antonelli
This advice seems correct, but the citation is wrong.
What is being quotedseems to be a portion of the Department of Labor's regulations implementing the Fair Labor Standards Act. The correct citation is
Title 29, Section 785 of the Code of Federal Regulations.
Enosson
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Nicotine free Amish .sig.
We had a similar problem here, with the argument that even though we weren't working but still we were limited. After many go rounds with managment they finally agreed to give us comp days in exchange for on call time. It was every three weeks of on call we got a comp day. Also since I am salaried if a problem did arise then we get extra comp days.
An armed society is a polite Society
If you had a union, then this probably wouldn't happen to you, however you might have other problems. First of all, unions cost money. You have to pay dues for them to represent you. Through collective bargining you may get payed enough to make up the difference, or even get payed more, but in the end your company's biggest expense, labor, goes up. In the end you may make more now, but your company may not be competitive in the long run and go out of business. The US steel industry has some good examples of this.
Another problem is that Unions usually force very strict rules upon employers, which don't allow the employer to take the circumstances into account when resolving problems. This can allow smart but lazy employees to exploit the system. In the end that means that either you're working harder to make up for those who aren't pulling their own weight, or your company becomes unproductive. Of course poor management in a non-union company can also cause this same problem.
The other thing I don't like about unions is seening the money you pay in dues being spent by the unions on political candidates that I can't stand. If being a member of a union is a requirement for my job, then unions shouldn't be allowed to spend my dues on political contributions.
In some circumstances unions make things better for their employees, and the expense of maintaining the union is worthwhile to it's members. Personally, I'll bargain for myself. If my opinion alone isn't enough to change managment's way of doing something, then I can join with several other key employees to make our voices heard. If that doesn't work, then I can always find another job. My job is far from perfect, but when there have been major issues in the past we've been able to have our voices heard, and get major problems changed. A couple times it has taken people leaving in order for managment to change, but they have changed.
I work for a smaller company as a sys admin, so I'm often on call. The nice thing is that management understands (is that an oxymoron?) that I can't be home 24/7 on weekends ready to go *IN CASE* the server farm decides to melt down or something. At my company, we do quadruple redundancy. Every 4th week, I'm the primary contact. I either need to fix it if I'm home, or call one of the other 3 "stand by" techs if I can't. It's worked well in that we've never experienced more than a half hour of downtime using this system, even at 2 AM when a hard drive died once. Also, when I do get called in, I get paid a buttload of overtime (especially between 12 and 7 AM) so it's worth my while.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
We get 1 hour of pay for every 4 we are on call.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Take a look at the last article Cliff ran on On-Call support, many many answers there. http://slashdot.org/askslashdot/00/10/17/1844229.s html
and of course they don't start making that kind of money until they're in their 30's after spending additional years in school and in a residency.
on the other hand, tech people start making lots of money the minute they're out of school, and sometimes even while they're in high school.
you're on call and you're not paid for it.
.com and I know that 6 out of 8 hrs a day that he's in the office he's playing Doom with his co-tech support guys.
oh no, poor you. you're being taken advantage of.
look at how doctors have to be on call and serve a residency that means they have to work 18 hr shifts and are continually on call for a few YEARS... all while being paid CRAP.
and you're making $60k+ and get to go home and sleep and play on your computers and play games the majority of the day when nothing is going wrong. Yea, I know what you guys do. My fried is the head of tech support at a large
don't bitch and moan. you're lucky to still have a job with all of the layoffs going around.
I worked for HP for 5 years as a unix admin for manufacturing sites. I was always part of an on-call rotation. HP has what it calls GAP. It stands for Guaranteed Availability Pay. Basically, instead of paying you only when you get called in (and encouraging unreliable systems), they would pay you for being on-call. There would be no extra pay beyond GAP for a call-in.
I though this made a lot of sense because you still got paid even if there were no problems. It really encouraged you to make the systems as reliable as possible.
I mean, what kind of place would we live in if police only got paid for the arrests they made? That's a rediculous idea.
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That's just the way it is
Isn't it worth having some idea of where to begin before consulting a lawyer? Just as it is good to search the net for medical advice before consulting a doctor. You have no idea about the competency of the "professional", and it's impossible to judge. When you walk in there without a clue, you are begging to be exploited.
Quit and go work for a competitor under a contract that gets you paid for all hours you work. Chances are that if you hand in a letter of resignation with that as the reason, you will get a raise (Counter-offer.) as well as having your demands satisfied.
I work in the IS/IT department in a healthcare facility. Whoever is on call in IS gets $1 / hour to be on call. We are on call 15.5 hours/day M-F and 24 hours/day Sat and Sun. If we get called out, we get paid for at least an hour even if it is a 15 minute call. We get 1.25 hours minimum if we have to go on-site. Some of the clinical staff gets $2-$3 / hour. I have contacts at other facilities that get >$5 / hour and have heard of some getting paid regular hourly pay, just to be on call, but that is few and far between. Any way, thats my $.02.
-sigmund
I have often had this same discussion with my wife, who is a nurse at one of the top ten hospitals in the country. When she is on call, she receives approximate 20% of her hourly rate while she is waiting for an emergency. If she needs to respond (aka go to work), she receive time and a half, whether or not she is over 40 hours. Please note that she must arrive within 45 minutes.
From what I understand, this is close to the industry standard for the medical practice. Why should IT reinvent the wheel? IMHO if this is adequate compensation for those saving lives, it should be more than adequate for those who are stuck with the less important task of keeping uptime.
I work for a small midwestern ISP. Where each of the system administrators are required to carry a pager on a rotating schedule (provided they live within 15 minutes of the office. The largest problem we faced is how to compensate people correctly, some are salaried, some are hourly, each at a different rate. What we worked out is we each carry the pager for a week at a time, and get compensated for a days pay for each week. This works out for both us and the company, if we come in every night for an hour, same pay. If we get no pages, same pay. Salaried employees get their salary converted to hourly pay (yearly salary/2000) * 8, hourly just get 8 hours on their timesheet. A rather nice scheme.
Just my humble opinion
Actually, i am on pager right now... =) Anyway, at my company we have always been paid for carrying the pager.. Up until last year it was $15 a day for the pager and if you got callexd it was a minimum of 4 chargable hours at your normal wage. Then the tech boom hit, and management decided to poll for the "tech industry standard" which we get now... That is (at least for my company) $20/8 hour shift 4 hours minimum charge on a call in via pager... How this breaks down... Monday-Friday: 2 shifts/day Weekends: 3 shifts/ day Hense on a weekly basis, that wiould be 16 shifts which is equivilent to $320 / week for carrying the pager. After taxes thats an extra 400 in my pocket. and when it goes off, the money starts rolling in ON TOP of the base pay, which you always get. so another example... 2 week time frame base pager : 320x2 $640 7 calls(example) 7x4(minimum)x$32.50(my wage)$910 total for 2 weeks $1550 on top of my salary. we based the new pager pay off of Nortel's page pay policy, with a few modifications, but they are essentially the same. Good luck! Mike
Since the law doesn't gude us, employers will do whatever the job market will tolerate. If the job market is slow (and it has dropped of a lot here in the SF Bay Area), then it is a lot harder for employees or contractors to stipulate terms. Do your best, but don't blow a whole deal over it.
When hiring contractors, a contracting agency asked me to pay a premium of 3 (or was it 4) hours per week, with the understanding that if I had to page anybody, the first 3 (or 4) hours were already paid for. This is in 1996 or so-- things were not slow like today, but it was before the market went totally nuts.
For myself, if I am to be on-call, then I insist on having enough control over the system in question that I can prevent an after-hours problem in the first place. If I can't take reasonable steps to keep things working, then I don't want to take the heat when they break. Of course, that position won't work for everybody, especially in this market.
Unions might provide some help with this question, but fundamentally their value models don't work well in IT.
Hope that helps.
--mkb
Know some nurses? The ones I know get a flat-fee of $X for being on call for that night. It is, of course less than the full hourly rate, but you get it whether or not you're called in.
The call lasts a specific time, after which, the pager is shut off. That pay is mandatory in exchange for losing your life for one night: can't go out and drink, can't travel, etc. When you come in, you're on the clock, quite possibly for overtime.
It doesn't quite sound legal to expect you to be on-call 24/7 for free. Don't stand for it. Find out what your rights are and assert them, or move on.
I can explanate how to administrate your network. You must configurate and segmentate it, so it can computate.
I receive an annual salary. Based upon the hourly breakdown of that salary, I earn one quarter of my hourly rate for every hour (16 every night) I am on-call and on Saturdays. On Sundays, I earn something like a dollar an hour (all 24).
I am expected to respond in 10 minutes from a page to determine severity over the phone.
The first thing to do, before you even worry about being paid, is to set up a procedure/policy for when you can be called. If you are being called for every little thing, no amount of money is worth losing your coding/surfing/vegging time.
That having been said, the last place I worked on-call was a hospital, the system there worked reasonably well:
There was always a 3rd shift person in the IT dept, they were responsible for monitoring, resetting terminals, basic stuff.
After them came the "desktop staff" a group of 5 people who rotated on-call(5pm - 7am) by the week(Mon-Sun). They fixed most problems (stuck logins etc. Anything 3rd shift couldn't)
Above them was the "systems group" (me and 4 others) who were on call all the time. We fixed everything else(Servers on fire, demons have infested the network)
3rd shift got regular pay + shift differential
Desktop got $1/hour for oncall, plus time and a half (min 1 hour) if they were called.
Systems got $2/hour plus time and a half(1 hour min)
As you can see, this worked out for me. I got an extra $1024 a month, and was called...maybe...once or twice a month (by the time it filtered by 2 levels it was usually solved). And when I was called it was usually 9-10pm not late enough to ruin my night.
Whatever you do, don't go salary if you expect to be called often. One night of rebuilding servers at 2:00am while not being paid time and a half will convince you of that. Hope this helps. -ajb
1. NO on-call employees - 3 rotating shifts
2. On-call time divided into 'watches' Watch part of job description, formalized in contracts. Actual response time paid as legal over-time.
Of the two, #1 worked best, for various legal reasons.
Here, two questions come to mind. Your investment (stock options, bonuses, amount of time to find another comparable job, 'psychic' investment) in the company and the loyalty they feel they have a 'right' to demand of you.
It's reassuring to hear management is willing to work with you. That will probably change as the economy continues to shrink (especially in IT).
Remember guys, this is Amerika. Just because you have the most votes, doesn't mean you get to win.--Fox Mulder
I see this as just one more link in the chain. Ever since people in the IT/Programming field started making more than a pittance, many companies have been looking for ways to commoditize what we do and pay us less for it. First came applications that were supposed to do away with the need for having in-house programmers. Then came outsourced support and development. Lately we've seen the H-1B conspiracy (blatant corporate welfare of ever there was such a thing), and attempts to export development jobs to lower-paying locales (India, some asian countries). And now this.
I'm not sure if I have a solution for this. An IT union might or might not work. There's a real stigma attached to this idea. Most IT people consider themselves professionals, so doing such a thing would be taboo. But then, the corporations insist upon commoditizing our work and treating us like unskilled laborers, so I don't think we're obliged to act in a professional manner.
The best thing we can do right now is remain extremely vigilant. When an employer gives you a raw deal like that, go out and get an offer for a better job. Convince your co-workers to do the same. If your current employer is reasonable, he/she will pay attention to your gripes if half the workforce is visibly looking to leave.
"You done taken a wrong turn."
-Bill McKinney, in Deliverance
If we have to come in for overtime, the company pays for four hours (at the overtime rate) even if you are only on premises for 15 minutes. I like it when something goes wrong after hours since they make it well worth my time. Since more than one of us are on-call, if someone is out of town it is understandable - we just exchange our weekend plans during the week so we know such-and-such won't be available.
My understanding is that the federal Wage & Hour group of the Department of Labor has a set of requirements on this. Depending on the terms of your on-call, you are either "engaged to wait" or "waiting to be engaged". If the former, I think they have to pay you for the time (at a reduced rate). If the latter, they only pay when you get called.
Give the feds a call to make sure.
While on-call, the programmer got 20% of the lowest hourly rate for their salary grade (usually around $2/hour).
If the programmer was beeped and had to respond by either calling the operator or dialing into the system, they were paid overtime for that incident, with a minimum of 4 hours overtime paid per incident.
Good luck on getting anything similar!
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
Apprach management/HR Demand all of the above Get fired
Please read the book for a better description... But to sum up, there are two kinds of employees: Hourly and Salaried. Hourly employees *must* be paid at least time-and-a-half overtime pay. Period. They can't be compensated with "comp time" or bribed with Rice Krispy Treats. No, as I understand it, the employer must pay 1.5 x Hourly Pay for every hour worked overtime during a week. That little poster in the break room just about sums it up. To compensate for less (or not at all, like some posters are infering) is illegal.
Not all employees must be paid overtime. There are exclusions for "highly" paid workers. I don't know what the cutoff is, but I haven't received overtime since my second programming contract out of school.
My bro-in-law's ex place of work seemed to be a fair arrangement. He shared being 'on-call' with a couple other techs, so he was only on call for 1 week, off for 2 or 3 weeks. The company he worked did contract work and charged 1.5 times the regular rate, and he go to keep the 0.5.
DOS is dead, and no one cares...
DOS is dead, and no one cares...
If there's a Bourne Shell, I'll see you there
Thanks for the correction!
Pay him $250. Ask him to read your contract and advise you. Don't listen to anything anyone on this website tells you. It will be invalid advice. The previous statement does not apply to me.
would be at your own HR department.
It has been brought up to management if only being paid when an issue occurs is legal
Your HR and Payroll department will certainly have documentation of company policy. Reconcile this against what you actually are getting paid. Talk to your payroll department since you said your company is willing to work with you and gather all such documentation. Reference your research against what information you can glean from resources available from your state government, whether online or if you have to solicit it via facsimile or snail mail, or maybe walk on down to the closest state office and ask. The Legal Information Institute will get you started. That will help resolve the issue of legality, though it will involve more effort than just asking.
If you are not happy with the terms and conditions of your employment once you have determined its legal merits, the question becomes more muddy. Labor organization and talk thereof can polarize labor/management as well as workers themselves; be sure of your footing and your intentions if you would choose to engage that dialog.
I left a job for on-call bullshit as well. I have one week left on this job and they still owe me about 3 weeks of comp time (i'm salaried) and I know that I will never see it. This is after being on-call for about half of the last year. The place I'm going to gave me a big honkin' raise and absolutely ZERO on call with no intentions of ever having an on-call lineup. The rule at my soon to be EX-employer is that if you want to schedule vacation, you are so important that we can't live without you for even a day. As soon as you go to negotiate more vacation, a raise, or resign you aren't worth a cold pint of piss.
I just called the labour board here for this since they handed me a pager that I am supposed to carry around at all times since I am the sole IT admin for a 50+ workstation network. According to the ministry, if I get called in the company has to pay me either full pay for the time I am in or minimum wage * 3hrs. That is the minimum that the company has to shell out.
At minimum, you should be getting one-for-eight.
A time when I needed a union : as a sysadmin I was *forced* to work a 17 hour day helping to prepare a proposal (clearly beyond my job description), I got like a 30 min break the whole evening ... When I went to payroll to see about overtime, the [helpfull] lady told me that if I marked the hours as overtime, there was a loophole they could use to get out of paying me for the hours all together [some comp time scam]! She said I'd be better off marking it as regular hours so I'd atleast acrue sick leave.
I
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And as for the find a new job comment, you might have a situation where you can get up and get a new job, but for most of people this is not an option. The fact is I can't quit my job for atleast another 6 mos [ and I am counting the days believe me ] ... any job you can walk away from on a whim is probably one where your serving fries.
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
thank you for getting it! I think alot of these people who replied to my statement so angrily are 12 year olds who've never worked a day in their lives.
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
nope no contract ... what I mean to say is that quiting a job is a serious proposition -- a life change. I can't get up and quit because I hate it, not because of my job, but because of the people I support and the financial commitments I have. My life is a very carefully stacked game a jenga, pull one brick out and the whole thing crumbles know what I mean? :) I need time to re-arrange the bricks before I pull one out ... that means paying of CC's, finishing school, saving enuf money to be out of work for a month, and finding a job that won't cause me to relocate :) THAT will take 6 - 8 months to accomplish.
This is what I mean by I can't just get up and quit, and I'd gather alot of people are in this boat as well :)
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
Back in 1995 when I was doing on-call IT, I was paid a salary, but when you were on-call you were paid 25% of what your salary worked out to be. The first month I was there I was the only on-call person, so I was getting a 150% of a paycheck. The system that I was babysitting needed all the attention during that time. That settled down once we had installed a reliable server and a few more people.
Guaranteed Hours: One employer I had paid us 5 hours of OT just for being on-call for the week. Then if we actually needed to work, we got paid extra OT for the hours we worked.
Comp Time: Another employer I had allowed us to leave early or come in late to work to compensate for our on-call work withing the same pay period (he didn't want to pay OT). However, we did not have to monitor the system, we just carried pagers and when the pager went off we had to respond. The great thing though was that a lot of times the on-call guy only worked 4 days a week in the office because by the time Friday rolled around he was already at 40 hours so not too many people complained about the on-call work since that usually meant you were going to get a "paid" 3-day weekend.
Salary: The last employer I had where I was required to take an on-call shift paid us on salary and thus eliminated that whole pesky OT pay problem. However, he was pretty good about letting us mangle our hours in the office if we had a lot of after hours work we had to do.
Anyway, as with any other employer/employee relationship make sure to get the rules in writing so that there are no questions about the rules and no way for your employer to screw you out of your pay.
My team and I are salaried. We have a contact cell phone that is passed between techs. This is so that we can user email to sms gateways to get messages to the phone (monitoring system). The reason that we do this is because we haven't found a pager that offers this kind of service.
:)
Last week we lost a machine on wednesday (hardware failure). We worked on that until 2am thursday. Got to work again at 9am thursday. We then had problems with one of our sites starting thursday night, 18:00. The software that runs that site is proprietry, so no community support. That saw us through until 2am Friday morning.
8:02am Friday morning, we get a call from the client on the emergency cell phone (for alerts only - it says so in the contract!) 'How are things going?'
me: 'urgh'
him: 'It's ***. How are things with the site?'
me: 'urgh. sent an e-mail. Please see e-mail?'
him: 'I just want a quick update. I'm not at work yet.'
me: 'its up. Email. Tired. urgh'
him: 'What was the problem?'
me: 'please check your e-mail. I'm going to sleep'
And because we're salaried, that's just the breaks. No overtime pay. It says so in the contract. No rights to the 48 hour work week as defined by the EU. Had to waive those in the contract. No right to sleep in when you've pulled to 18 hour shifts in a row. Says so on the cell phone
/* Wayne Pascoe
We all think of the unions as the semi-skilled laborer unions (auto-manufacturers, teamsters, etc). In those scenarios, the employees have a WEAKENED bargaining position because they have skills. Why is this?
As a machinist, my time working on machines is more valuable because of my skills. My opportunity cost is unskilled labor. Therefore, as long as my employer is willing to pay be slightly more than minimum wage, I will continue with my skill-based job.
That is the goal of those unions.
In tech, there is no monopsony (single hired, for example, the colluding big-three automakers, only factory in town, etc.) so unionizing directly isn't as useful, we can all jump ship.
However, we shouldn't look at the blue-collar unions as an the example, look at the unions for professional sports. In those cases, much better paid people than ourselves have unionized to fight monopsony hiring. In that scenario, the union negotiates for reasonable compensation, etc.
I still don't want to unionize, but I think that we are better off looking at pro-sports for the example than the mob-run extortion rackets that we are talking about.
I have to return a page within 10 minutes, if needed be online within 30 min, and if really needed be onsite within an hour. All in all a pretty sweet deal..
No offense, but if these laws exist... huh? "Advanced Training" is about as vague as it gets - perhaps that means you've worked there for X period of time and "know the place" and what you're working on well. Maybe it means you have prior work experience relevant to the company. Or "certain classes of employees" - what? If there were such a stupid thing, what would prevent a company from classifying there employees in whatever way they pleased. Are there enormous checklists put out by the Department of Labor (or state laws) which enumerate the sort of tasks people who can "legally" be salaried can perform? I have a very hard time believing one must meet certain credentials in order to be salaried.
Some may not think this is a good deal, but the folks in my team and I have been pretty happy with it.
We're a 24/5 shop, but we rotate coverage on the weekends. Since we don't normally get paid by the hour, but refuse to work weekends without compensation, we get comp time. You get a call or have to come into the office for a weekend you're covering, and you get that many hours (although it's usually >4 hours = 1 day) off at a later date.
Last weekend I had to swing by the office for three or four hours to handle a server down situation, and so I'm taking friday off.
Eric
What? You'd rather have all your garbage pile up around your house?
I would guess that the previous contract said people had to work 40 hours per week and then got x% for overtime. Then the need for on-call employees arrived (relatively new- before pagers/cell phones you had night shifts for critical tasks). The union tried to define rules for working on-call. The management rejected it and therefore, people still only have to work 40 hours per week.
I agree that unions can abuse their power. People, however, don't unionize for the fun of it. Unions exist where management got greedy and screwed up big time.
I can't comment on what is LEGAL, but I can tell you how we compensated the technicians in the NOC I established at my previous employer. The techs all worked 8 hour days (for a salary), staggered to cover the desks from 6am to 8pm. Outside those hours, a fraction of the techs rotated through on-call duty, and were paid a on-call per diem that we calculated from the likelihood that they would be paged. This per diem was around $2500 per quarter. When they were paged with a problem, they got paid a "bonus" at time and a half as if they were hourly. Our HR department was perfectly happy with this arrangement, but I couldn't tell you if its legal (here or in any other state). Hope this helps
~$140 AUD per week On-call payment
All on call work on Saturdays and week nights is at 1.5 hourly rate.
All on call work on sundays and public holidays is at double the hourly rate.
Phone support is rounded up to the nearest 15 minute inteval
On-Site call out is paid at a 2 hour minimum with possible meal benifits, travel time is included as work time on a call out.
On-Call officers have either the use of a government vehicle or Cab vouchers for transportation
On-Call officers have to be available in a condition to work while they are slated to be on call. IE. Not drunk and in the city so they can commute in a reasonable time.
One rule that doesn't get used to much is: an officer does not have to return to active duty until 10 hours after he finishes overtime (call out) and is not penalised for the lost time.
Hope this gives some help or pointers, though you must remember one thing about government work the pay is not the greatest but the rights and freedoms are greater than in the private sector.
My teammates and I, contractors and permies alike, each alternate informally carrying the team's emergency pager on a weekly basis. We're expected to be able to dial in reasonably quickly, and are paid the equivalent of about $350 per week we're on call, as well as hourly rate * 1.5 or some such for every hour we actually have to work outside of regular hours (I don't recall anyone ever actually claiming this.)
The whole thing works on common sense, and we're not controlled too tightly, but compared to what I read from some other IT employees, we seem to be getting a pretty liberal deal.
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
While my comments are no substitute for those of an accredited lawyer, I do believe that these business practices have been done by fast food companies in the past, and successfully challenged in court. Specifically, employees of those companies would be forced to stay after hours for cleaning and not compensated for the additional time they spent in the workplace. Taco Bell had to pay an untold fortune in compensation to those employees, and that ruling may prove to be applicable in this case.
Unions are even more corrupt than corporations. I will never again work for a union. They tell you what you can make, when you can do what, what you can do at work, and even how to vote. I was pressured many times by the union I was in to vote screaming liberal.
Just three more hours seapeople and you can finally take me away from this crappy God Damned planet full of hippies
Who, besides whiny losers, thinks it's appropriate to make a "public ordeal" about his girlfriend?
(As an aside, in my Girlfriend case, I have Matthew Sweet's pop masterpiece.)
--
If your girlfriend was shitty to you, would you ask "My girlfriend doesn't treat me the way I'd like to be treated. Do other people have girlfriends who are nice to them?" Or would you say to her "Hey, shape up or we're breaking up?"
Who cares what other people do? It's YOUR situation. Don't waste your time talking on Slashdot. Any employer who isn't going to pay you fairly sure isn't going to give Shit One about what a bunch of /.ers say about things.
I have to assume from the passive voice ("It has been brought up to management") that you, personally, have not discussed with your boss, and you're repeating what you've heard in conversations you've had with others in hushed tones, crouched behind your cubicle walls.
Talk to your boss directly and say "I count these hours as being working hours for reasons X, Y and Z, and I expect to be paid for them." If they're not amenable to that, then leave. Go to someone who does want to pay you fairly.
And to those who have posted "form a union!", I would suggest that if people like AC would stand up to the PHBs & their companies (or better yet, communicate with management before any of this comes down), we wouldn't NEED unions.
Your employer is not your parent. You are not required to work there. It's a relationship. If you're not holding up your end of the relationship, you get fired. So, too, should your company get fired if they're not holding up their end of things.
--
Sometimes, Unions are nice things.
Yeah, if you like being compaired to truckdrivers and trashmen.
IMO, if they want me to be available then they pay for me to be on the clock. I do not offer up my personal life on the alter of corporate needs. If my personal life is not compatible with the company then it is the companies tough luck. My life is not scheduled around my work, my work is scheduled around my life.
Okay I don't think I'm following the logic here.
Management rejected the On-call scenario presented by the Union, therefore the Union did not get their requested options in the contract, which to me makes it sound like the Union LOST. So if the Union LOST how does it turn right back around and get it's way. How is the employee "right" by refusing to do his/her contractually obligated job?
To me this just sounds like the "bullet proof union employee" crap. Instead of Union employees showing what they are worth by doing good honest work and being an asset to the company that they work for they band together and hold the company hostage for more pay, less work, more comps. The company has very little it can do because if they refuse the contract the Union employees just slow production, walk away, or sit and because of other similar contract negotiations the company has little they can do to get workers back on the line except give in to the Union demands.
I've seen some crappy stuff done by Unions. Mostly it's mid contract renegotiations siting "safety concerns" - which typically get pressed while the extra money and comps part gets quietly stuck somewhere in the back and glossed over by the spinnners. "Oh yeah we are requesting a small monitary change, but the main issue is safety."
As you can tell my biased opinion is that Unions are just organized extortion, protection for employees but only the ones who pay. Notice some of the dot com layoffs that have happened union employees are the last to go. Not because of their intrinsic value but because of the contractual obligations set forth and the added cost laying off union employees would entail.
When you stop worrying about your job security you get lazy. I've seen Union employees come to work drunk, stoned, sleeping on the job, get hurt due to their own negligence, refuse work and yet the employer is unable to terminate because the Union won't allow it. Solidarity and all.
Back to the topic on hand: You should be able to speak with your employer and discuss your issues amicably. If you cannot do this it's probably a good sign that the employer you are with is not where you should be. There are many many companies out there that are willing to compensate their employees adequately for their time and good work. I would suggest that you approach your employer and if they are unwilling to set a monitary value to compensate you for your time they might find another mechanism for support. Collect some data to take with you such as yearly support cost from third party vendors, comparisons of other support mechansisms pros/cons, salary/hourly comparisons of other IT workers and plans. Market your skills show them that they should be paying you according to your worth to the company and the value that you bring in your service.
Personally I'm on call on a rotation basis, primary one week, secondary one week, then off one week. I'm not penalized if I don't answer a call because there is a secondary, as long as I'm not abusive about it. I can usually work out any out of town time with my coworkers to provide adequate support for the company. My compensation is my salary plus a yearly bonus equivelant to 10% (up to 20%) of my salary and a minimum of 4% (max 10%) raise per year, all based off of MY performance. This is what I negotiated with my employer for my valued services. Look at the task from a partnering point of view instead of a us/them point of view and things go amazingly well.
"Do not be swept up in the momentum of mediocrity." - anon
Basically, there are four types of employees that can be made exempt: Executive, Administrative, Professional, Outside Salespeople. We computer guys fall into the Professional group.
To be an Exempt Professional (quoting the DOL site) one must perform (1) Work requiring knowledge of an advance type in a field of science or learning customarily acquired by a prolonged course of specialized intellectual instruction and study, as distinguished from a general academic education and from an apprenticeship, and from training in the performance of routine mental, manual, or physical processes...
or (4) Work that requires theoretical and practical application of highly-specialized knowledge in computer systems analysis, programming, and software engineering, and who is employed and engaged in these activities as a computer systems analyst, computer programmer, software engineer, or other similarly skilled worker in the computer software field. (This fourth item has some strings attached.)
(Clauses (2) and (3) don't pertain to us.)
If we are in a "learned profession" that is considered professional exempt, then (from the DOL) "The ``learned'' professions are described in Sec. 541.3(a)(1) as those requiring knowledge of an advanced type in a field of science or learning customarily acquired by a prolonged course of specialized intellectual instruction and study as distinguished from a general academic education and from an apprenticeship and from training in the performance of routine mental, manual, or physical processes.
I also found where the department of labor states that exempt employees must "excercise discretion and independent judgement." The DOL cites an example that a computer programmer who makes the preparations, writes the code, and completes a project would be considered exempt. It also said that a junior programmer, or one that just does the flowcharting for a programmer would not be considered exempt, because they are not working independently. An exempt worker must show that they make these sorts of independent decisions "customarily and regularly."
(Yekrats)
Ceci n'est pas une pipe.
Wow, your situation is so similar to what happened to me three years ago, it's almost as if I wrote it myself. Here's the scoop on how I got my own back pay.
I used to work for a major financial institution in their IT office, and like you, I was an hourly employee forced to work after hours on-call work. ("It's part of the job," they said.) Well, I had an inkling it wasn't right, but I didn't argue. Nor did I question it, until the on-call time became oppressive. Since taking the job, we went from being a 8am-10pm shop with one location to a 24/7 shop with multiple locations nationally. It became common to recieve three or four calls during the night. The employer also changed us from hourly to salary employees to avoid paying us overtime.
Then I picked up a very good book at my local library: Every Employee's Guide to the Law. I highly recommend it!
Please read the book for a better description... But to sum up, there are two kinds of employees: Hourly and Salaried. Hourly employees *must* be paid at least time-and-a-half overtime pay. Period. They can't be compensated with "comp time" or bribed with Rice Krispy Treats. No, as I understand it, the employer must pay 1.5 x Hourly Pay for every hour worked overtime during a week. That little poster in the break room just about sums it up. To compensate for less (or not at all, like some posters are infering) is illegal.
If you're on-call, you get hours for everything you do for the company, but not necessarily for waiting around for the beeper to go off. So, if during the night you get called at 1:00 a.m. and 3:00 a.m., and work a half an hour on each, you've worked 1 hour of overtime.
There are pretty strict rules for who can be an Salaried employee. Basically, someone has to have "advanced training" (ie. college degree) or else fit into certain classes of employee. (Managerial or secretarial). If you are a salaried employee, you are the whippin' boy of your employer. They can do anything... ask you to work any amount of time, and it's your job to do it with a smile. Since I did not have a computer degree, and the job was formerly an hourly position, I was made an salaried employee illegally.
I'd advise checking with the US Department of Labor closest to you. There's probably one in your state. You can have questions answered without "turning them in." You can even request a complaint form. Have it ready, in case things go awry.
In the US, we have whistleblower laws to protect people from employers who try to punish those that turn them in for wrongdoings. If the thought of losing your job concerns you, you can turn them in anonymously. You have some leverage on your side. If an employer is sued for breaking this law, they generally pay through the nose. I forget the exact figures.
However, I spoke to my employer one on one about the law, and about my findings. I went armed with information, I backed up my evidence, and my manager took the information to H.R., who talked to the corporate lawyer. Well, what-do-ya-know, I was right. We had our back pay "expidited". I had it within a month.
Little will strike fear into your company more than the dreaded "Department of Labor Audit". (Well, maybe a "software audit"...) If the government has reasonable cause, they'll send a bunch of flunkies over and go through your local HR office with a fine-tooth comb. They'll check every employee over, interview disgruntled employees, and tie up the whole office in a paperwork quagmire. 'T ain't pretty, I bet.
Information is your friend. Fortunately, I had documented almost all of the time I had been on-call. You need documentation to be able to prove your case.
So, I wish you the very best of luck. Read the book, get yourself a lawyer, talk to the Department of Labor.
--HTH, Yekrats
Ceci n'est pas une pipe.
I had a job with Philips/Magnavox (a small branch operation, mind you, but part of the system). Because we had marketers in every part of the world, it was decided that their machines always had to be running, therefore, the IT Dept always had to be working.
I wasn't opposed to the basic idea of this - except that they didn't want to hire more people to cover the time. So 2 people who usually covered an 8 hour shift were suppose to trade off a cell phone between the two of us, and always be available during that time. If one of us took a vacation, tough - the other guy was then on for a 24 hour shift. But since we were salary, we didn't get 24 hour pay. If you were having sex with your wife and that damned phone rang, you had to answer it.
I left. If a company wants to provide a warm body for support, then make them pay for it. There's no excuse for "well, we need this so you do it so you get to work it". Its better for the users to have someone in the building when they call, then somebody sitting in a theater who has to run out to the hallway and figure out why somebody can't get to their email through the phone connection.
Of course, I could be wrong.
John "Dark Paladin" Hummel
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
They could start arresting each other.
"Hey, Bob, let me arrest you today and you can arrest me tomorrow"
Use the tried and true method held dear to contractors and other hourly employees since the dawn of industry...
Overbill. If you get a call that lasts thirty minutes, bill 2 hours for it. Or four, or whatever you can get away with.
For those who cannot get away with that, the construction industry has a great way of dealing with overtime and on call for their service people. When it's a person's turn to go on call, they receive a set amount of money ($50 at the company I know most about), regardless of if they get called or not. If they do go out on a call, they still get the $50, plus they bill for the hours worked.
Maybe you and the others in this position can negotiate a flat rate like that; if the company itself won't ante up, maybe you can work a deal with your management to bill a few extra hours for on call weeks, no matter what.
sononomo@hotmail.com - Has seen the Factory Ass at Comdex
"Must an employer pay a non-exempt employee for time spent on-call?"
m l
"It depends"
"...
to determine whether an employee's on-call time is compensable under FLSA:
(1) the terms of the employment agreement, if any;
(2) the physical restrictions placed on an employee while on call;
(3) the response time;
(4) the percentage of calls expected to be returned by the on-call employee;
(5) frequency of actual calls during on-call periods;
(6) actual uses of the on-call time by the employee; and
(7) the disciplinary action, if any, taken by the employer against employees who fail to answer calls. "
For more on this see:
http://www.iog.unc.edu/programs/hresources/q02.ht
And consult a lawyer. (And you'll probably still not have a crystal clear answer unless there is case law identical to your situation.)
BTW: My father works as a mechanic/engineer on critical machines, and they also have pager-duty that rotates, so it isn't just IT/IS people. His company only rotates the pager among salaried (exempt) individuals now because the company didn't want to pay overtime for the pager.
Their pager system limited the person to a fairly small geographical area (less than 1 hour drive), and the employee was to respond immediately, and they were the only person on-call at a time.
There's a survey report available on this subject, but the full text is $395.
ve never worked with a Union tech, but I've worked with Union carpenters, electricians, and plumbers. They have all been hard working, honest, reliable, and done the highest quality work.
Having been in a small room with a large explosion due to a gummint electrician too smart to read the large clear labeling that said "Do not attach to outside power while lever is set to test," I have to say they do not always do the highest quality work.
Oracle and unix guy.
If your employees are on strike, it's probably because you have done something wrong, dumbass.
Oracle and unix guy.
The reality is, one month looking for every $10K in yearly pay, if you have to start looking suddenly in a down market. For most of us, that means tens of thousands of lost dollars. That's pretty restraining, for those of us with brains.
Oracle and unix guy.
The important point is, management says they are willing to work with, but that is pretty much meaningless if they have all the power. Kinda like suing the US government - you can't, unless they say you can. Which can change at any time, of course.
Oracle and unix guy.
If you're on-call, you're working. Wouldn't they fire you if you turned off your pager? If so, then you're working and should be paid.
InstaPundit! Ahead of the Curve Since 30 Minutes Ago
Who paid for this consultation?
It depends on the state you live in. In ohio they basically said that if you do not like the company and its conditions, quit. That was the only way to get out of having to do what they asked as a condition of employment.
Other states probably have different attitudes. The place where I checked was the wage and hour division of the state government.
Good Luck,
dzimmerm
Jumping to correct solutions slowly is better than jumping to incorrect solutions quickly.
You'd think though with all our fancy computer systems we'd be able to develop some kind of automated union software that could dramatically simplify unionization and lower the administrative over head costs resulting in higher wages for the employees, less coruption and improved overall efficencies. Granted from a pure free market approach this wouldn't be as effecient as no-union, but then the employer benifits more from these effeciences than workers anyway...
NoLo press has an article on this subject.
... at this large tech company is:
1/4 your normal pay rate for all the time you are required to carry the pager. Response hours from the time you get the page until you leave the building, your normal over-time rate, with weekend, holiday, shift multipliers applied. 30 minute maximum response time requirement also, IIRC, so you can't wander too far from home base if you are on the pager. And 100% sobriety while on call required as well, just in case you *do* have to rebuild that server.
I've never had to carry the pager, but I've had to decide if I wanted particular servers covered 24x7 and to cough up the bucks out of my budget if I did. A *good* thing, IMHO, to force managers to make that decision. It's too easy to spend somebody elses budget and blow off somebody elses ski weekend unless the cost comes home.
The answer of course, is "no".
Your post is one of the best arguments for unions I have ever read. Thank you.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
My Last Job was in Health Care..
We had a mix of Salaried and Hourly People.
EVERYONE was in the On-Call rotation.
Everybody got $1.50 pr hour for every hour you were on call but not working.. ( 128 hours if you never got called in )
Hourly people got OT if they were called..
30 minutes Min if you got paged and fixed it over the phone.
4 Hours Min if you had to go in and fix it.
I used to love getting 4 hours to go pull a piece of paper out of an HP printer.. hehe
Pontiac
If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur. --Red Adair
Provide statistics about the how (for what and how much) people get paid for doing their jobs (such as paying attention to their beepers or avoid having a beer on a saturday night). They should help you get something you can show to your boss, to make him understand.
Yes, of course you should get paid. Have you told your boss you think you should? If he refused, then he's simply being unreasonable. You'll have to persist, start a union or get another job.
(I live in Sweden and I'm not a member of any union.)
My mom works as a nurse for a hospital in Florida. They usually have atleast one person on call at all times. They only get paid their full salary when they are actually called in, the rest of the time they get paid around $2/hr. for being on call. (on call means they have to carry a beeper when they leave their home, and answer the beeps expediently)
Computers don't make mistakes. What they do, they do on purpose.
Under the Wage and hour and overtime acts, you are protected when you assert your rights (or even ask about them). Of course, they will not say they fired you for that.
BTW. Even if you are salaried, you may still be entitled to overtime pay.
Fight Spammers!
Article XIV: On-Call Pay
Quoting:
Each employee specifically designated as in an "on-call" status shall be paid twenty percent (20%) of the job rate for his/her classification for hours spent in that status. Employees, when designated for on-call status, are required to restrict their whereabouts to the extent that they are required to leave word at their home or with their supervisor where they can be reached and be in a position to return to work immediately when called. Upon return to work, such employees are not eligible for call back or reporting pay, as provided in Articles XII and XIII, nor for on-call pay while at work, but shall be paid their regular hourly rate, plus shift premium or special schedule premium, if applicable, or the overtime premium as set forth in Section A. of Article X, if applicable, for actual work performed. Time spent in an on-call status shall not be counted in calculating time worked for deter-mining when an overtime premium shall be paid.
I worked for a company where we had to be on call for two weeks about every four months. What showed up on my paycheck was a bonus for whatever the decided amount was whether I was paged or not. When I did get called, it was time + 1/2.
Everyone does it different, but in my opinion if you are expected to not be out of town, or out having a good time with alchohol and the such, you should get a little extra.
Of course, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.
Then she should do what my group does when we drive between the "normal" job site and "off-site" sites. Itemize to our 1040s.
"Population 1,656"
I've just returned to plumbing(I can make much more money fixing sinks versus computers), and my company's policy is $50 a week for being on call, plus $20 for every call I take on top of my overtime pay. Which doesn't seem like to bad a deal, we usually throw in a double time rate for anything after 11pm or on a major holiday.
Great minds think alike,but,fools seldom differ.
You, good sir, could place a lump of coal up your anus and create a diamond, you worthless, non-employable, English Major. Oh, and while you're at it, I'll take a double-espresso.
Great minds think alike,but,fools seldom differ.
Here's how it works here... A number of us rotate being on-call, a week at a time. There's a small hourly pay for this. In addition, any calls that require coming in physically (punch-in) automatically give you a minimum of 2 hrs, at time-and-a-half = 3 hrs of pay. So, Joe Gomer lost his taskbar, come in, ka-ching!, 3 hrs worth of pay for 10 minute's work (minus driving time). All told, it ends up being a few hundred extra bucks, give or take, depending on how stupid the users are being, and depending on how many times the NT servers die. Still, being on call is a royal hassle, so I usually let one of the lowly technicians take mine (I'm an admin).
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
I would recommend you referring to your state/province/country rules regarding the IT field etc within your jurisdiction. This is the best and only place to start. If there are no IT specific rules, you fall under the employment category rules for full time/part time/contract, etc.. whichever you belong to. It's also nice to talk to your HR rep and ask for a copy of the company's rules and regs regarding OT and on call.. before they change it!
(1st sig) If this were a snappy sig, you'd be reading it right now. (2nd sig) I'm a karma whore. >Insert FUD here
I got this rule-of-thumb from a senior aerospace worker-bee.
anytime you are paged, and need to call back on the phone, bill 1 hour
anytime you are paged and need to go on site, bill 4 hours.
but you do need rotation, and they cannot require you do anything more than wear your beeper on weekends (cannot require you to be in range, or even call back if they do not provide a calling card or cell phone).
mostly, you do the passive-agressive thing
1) pager never went off
2) pager went off, but I was away from a phone (ie in a boat)
#1 is the most popular, because it happens so often naturally.
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
We put together a proposal of how we wanted to see things changed, with a few options as far as proceedure, with data compiled from this Ask Slashdot that I submitted. We then turned it over to management and let them know what our "demands" were. I left the organization before anything got resolved however.
Take the pager, open it up, trace the leads from the battery connector to the PCB and solder a 4 watt 2.2 ohm resistor between them.
No problem.
What would Lemmy do?
That is not an observation, that is an opinion. In case you're unfamiliar with our friend the scientific method, here would be an appropriate observation:
Observation: you are an hourly employee sometimes asked to be on-call.
Advice: try to eliminate on call hours, switch to decent salary position, or leave job.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
She get's calls up to 10pm or 6 am to go to a school. She doesn't get milage (even if she goes to more then one school during the day (full time teachers do)) The justification is that supply teachers are paid extra to handle the extra expense and whatnot. Don't think it's fair myself.
... and that would solve the "having to pay overtime" problem - still, a schedule would have to be drawn up and "coverage" would to be assigned and rotated (for fairness). Of course, one Fortune 500 firm I worked at made all of their customer support staff exempt salaried employees to avoid paying overtime. But then OSHA (don't ask me why OSHA) stepped in and found that the positions did not qualify as "exempt" positions and forced the company to change the policy back ... The company sought to seek out the "whisteblower" who made the phone call - called individual people into the office of their superiors to quiz them on the identity of "Deep Throat"
AZspot
One evening I had plans to go out at 8pm. Unfortunatly as soon as I arrived home I received a phone call from work asking me to help with a problem with a customer site which he was unable to resolve. For the next 3 hours I was on the phone to the customer, attempting to resolve their problem with little success, due to them neglecting to tell me important details. My evening was ruined, and I'd done an extra 3 hours work unpaid in my spare time.
From then on I became difficult to contact on an evening. I purposly avoided purchasing a cell phone. I'd ensure that I never returned home directly, or that my phone was constantly in use. I also refused to do weekend work without first being assurred compensation.
Later I was asked to carry a cell phone all weekend as cover for a customer site. The particular network that this phone connected to had terrible reception problems in the vacinity of my home (hills, cathedral 100 yards away) - hence my usual weekend routine was severely interrupted. Due to an adminstrative cock-up on behalf of someone else, the customer was given the incorrect number for the phone, and consequentially it didn't ring. I wasn't paid a penny for the inconvenience.
Any examples of past experiences or how you dealt with such issues would be helpful, management is more than willing to work with us.
1) 3rd shift, if they want someone on call, they need to pay someone to be there.
2) Pay overtime for the time spent (from when you receive the page/call to when you resolve it, don't think it will go unnoticed if it takes 5 hours to help someone figure out how to FTP though).
3) Quit and become a programmer.
---
Hammer of Truth
I agree that you need to do a good job of seeing whether your current job can be "fixed". Every job is going to have things that piss you off...
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
"Whether waiting time is time worked under the Act depends upon particular circumstances. The determination involves ``scrutiny and construction of the agreements between particular parties, appraisal of their practical construction of the working agreement by conduct, consideration of the nature of the service, and its relation to the waiting time, and all of the circumstances."
Periods during which an employee is completely relieved from duty and which are long enough to enable him to use the time effectively for his own purposes are not hours worked. He is not completely relieved from duty and cannot use the time effectively for his own purposes unless he is definitely told in advance that he may leave the job and that he will not have to commence work until a definitely specified hour has arrived. Whether the time is long enough to enable him to use the time effectively for his own purposes depends upon all of the facts and circumstances of the case.
The general rule seems to be whether or not the employee is free to do as he pleases, or is restricted - tied to a phone, for instance - while waiting for the call.
There's an overview at http://www.mrsc.org/legal/flsa/nutsbolt.htm#E9E2
The one carry-a-pager job I had worked this way: They wanted 8-4 coverage on Sat and Sun, so I billed them 2 hours a day (25%) each weekend I covered, plus any time I spent on-site (2 hr minimum).
When I hear the word 'innovation', I reach for my pistol.
(somewhat OT) I live in CA (SF Bay) and it's almost absurd how much the 40-hour work week law is ignored, especially by the tech industry.
If you file official time sheets (for tracking or customer billing purposes), it's a good idea to keep copies. Just in case you get screwed in someway, it's a slamdunk to file with the labor board and get backpay (at 1.5x) and interest.
When I hear the word 'innovation', I reach for my pistol.
Not to get into a flamewar, but when I worked for a hospital, it was part of the standard union agreement that carrying a pager translated into 25% normal pay. If you got called in, it was the normal hourly rate of course, plus OT.
I took this philsophy with me when I was doing independant SA work some years ago. Simply told the customer that pager duty would translate into 25% normal pay, and it never cost me a deal. Usually, they would dump the pager on some poor salaried sod.
When I hear the word 'innovation', I reach for my pistol.
I used to work in a similar environment, and I was pretty happy with the pay setup.
I carried a pager and would get paid everytime it went off. So, a 2 minute trouble shooting call would get me a fee (it was about equal to 2 hours work). Then, if you work on a problem for more than an hour (or even have to go in uggh), you charge your regular hourly rate.
Of course this system means that you can only get paid if you're actually needed during the period of on-call. Otherwise, you're sacrifice of staying in town (not to mention jumping everytime you hear something that even resembles an electronic beep) is worthless.
You can't win em all. - miked
Your assumption is false.
I was speaking specifically of companies that try to screw you. (For example, companies that demand lots of on-call time with no compensation.)
If a company I work for and like asks for my advice, of course I give it freely.
My point was that if I am quitting a company because they pissed me off, they are not getting anything from me for free.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Companies already have people who are getting paid (a lot more than you) to figure out how to improve the company. They are called executives.
The best executives are constantly soliciting feedback from their employees, but I am not talking about well-run companies here.
If a company's management is so clueless that they need one of their techies to tell them what on-call compensation should be, there is little chance of saving them anyway. Better to end the relationship as smoothly as possible. Whether they improve or not after I am gone is not my concern. In some cases, it might be a net good for the world if that company fails.
Remember, a company is not a nation, church, or marriage. You do not belong to your company, you just work for it.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Sure, you could talk to a labor lawyer, find out how your state's laws apply to your situation, then go back to the company and say "this is what my lawyer told me, and here's what you should do to avoid legal problems"...
You could do that, but then you would be giving them free legal advice! Finding out if they are exposing themselves to legal hassles is their problem. Let them find out that kind of crap on their own time and with their own money
If you are unhappy being on-call and not being paid for it (and you should be), then here is what you should do: Utter not a single word of complaint, and start interviewing with other companies for your next job.
During your "exit interview", they will surely want to know why you quit. You might be tempted to use this opportunity to vent about all they have done wrong and why they are so unfair... Don't. If they want your advise about what they should change, they should pay you for it. Just smile and say you like your new opportunities at your new position better, shake hands, and walk away. Otherwise, you are breaking the One Rule for dealing with bad companies: Never consult for free!
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
---
Hollywood, Television, has become the dream machine. We need to take that back; each of us is a Dream Machine
In my office the hourly folks who are asked to be on call are paid 3 hours regular time each day they are on call plus time and a half each hour they are in the office if they are called plus 5% shift differential if it is after 7:00pm.
That only applies if you weren't working the day you were on call. If you're on call only in the evenings, you're paid 3 hours overtime just for comming in, plus each additional hour you are in past one hour.
it's really not a bad deal over all
Silly slashdot, sigs are for kids!
I had a friend who worked in the global product support division for a certain product within Nortel. These people were in much the same position as you, in that they had to carry a pager, and had to be able to respond to the page and be at work within a certan time period (1 hour, IIRC). Anyway, the way it worked there is that the employees were responsible for claiming how many pager shifts they worked. Then, they would be given a certain amount of additional salary for the shifts worked. If there was an actual page, however, then the employee was responsible for recording the number of hours worked on the issue, etc, etc, and they were paid accordingly. This way, the employees are properly compensated for the time carrying the pager *and* the work actually done should an issue arise.
Slashdot is not the place to get legal advice I'd agree with you there.
But it seems to me the poster is also trying to get a sense of what and how others in a similar position are paid. Presumably in order to be better informed when negotiating with his employers.
You get paid $x/hr for being on call and available. If the moment arised that you needed to respond to the page and work you got paid for 4 hours (regular hourly rate) just for starters. If the job only took you 30 minutes you still got the 4 hours pay, plus the hourly rate of being on call. If you happened to work over that 4 hour period you got paid another 4 hours pay. I've seen this approach for both nurses and pharmicists.
I asked my boss how on call time was handled and if we got compensated for being available. The answer that I received was, its part of the job...
I've heard it said that "companies that have unions deserve them."
"That's not even wrong..." -- Wolfgang Pauli
FunkyDemon
Having on call employees is a way for a company to have the equivalent of 3 employees for the price of one (ie: if you want 24 hour coverage, that requires 3 8 hr employees), or in extreme cases, 3 employees for the price of one part time employee. Which brings my first question. Do you work a normal 40 week and then are on call on your time off, or are you always on call. If the latter is true, get a real job, you're just being ripped off. If you are an actual full time employee, then on call status should be either voluntary, or compensated. Now I have worked in industries (such as the film industry) where you are on call all the time, on a voluntary basis, and the companies take this into consideration, (if you're not available, they call someone else, if you're enough, they stop calling you), but you really have to love your job a lot to put up with this, and you have to be well compensated when you do work. On the other hand, if enough people are willing to do the job for free, the company is not going to change their system. Also as the IT industry continues to collapse, jobs will become harder and harder to find, and compensation will become less and less. The glory days are over, and gone for good, if you are new into the industry, i suggest you go back to school and learn something else.
I'm a full-time employee and my abnormal hours support compensation is with a lump (very small lump mind you ;-) sum every day for the inconvenience if I'm not called in and as prepayment for small expenses such as pager batteries, fuel and phone calls when I am (called in, i.e.). Then I'm also paid overtime rates on top of this sum when I am called in to actually handle an after hours call. I Think this is the type of answer being called for here.
I'm a consulting engineer for a state on the east coast. My employer sells my total time to the state. The Official contract is for 40 hrs, but the state wanted me on call, my solution... I work 35hrs/week. And yes if I get called in, I get compensated with comp time or $$. I prefer comp time since the weather is great! PS. My Salary/Benefits are beter than a state employees! Go figure!
At the company I work for we get $30 flat rate for each day (night) we are on call. If we have to come in, then we clock in and regular (or overtime) pay is in effect.
I was working at one of the Top 5 banks of the world and we had the same issue. Here is how we dealt with it: - In a group of 5 we rotated on a weekly basis. Everybody was responsible to be on call for 7 days straight.
- We got paid (without incidents) roughly 60$/weekday and 120$/weekend day
- You had to be available by pager and mobile phone 24h
- You had to be on premises within one hour
- You are not allowed (out of insurance reasons) to go to the Datacenter on a weekday night with your own car. You had to take a Taxi. This was reimbursed.
- If an incident occured you were paid your normal salary plus 50% for weekend/night work.
- All was being paid monthly with your usual payroll
- The mobile phone and pager were company paid
I think this is a fair agreement, I hope this helps a little bit.
This may be a dumb question, but wouldn't it be more fair of management to switch you to a salaried pay rate rather than an hourly? On-call time should be compensated somehow. sabine (first post?)
There's a class action lawsuit called Cherry Schofield vs. State of Arizona which recently settled the oncall-pager dispute involving police. Result? people on pager call get about $1 per hour and overtime if actually called out.
If I remember correctly, California law (if you're even in California) will not allow the granting of "comp time" instead of real pay. It can be given in addition to, but not instead of.
IANAL, though. I could just be pulling this outta my ass.
--
All opinions presented here aren't mine.
I work in a team of 4 sysadmins. The way it works is we are all on call during the day and that is part of regular work. We rotate the off-hours pager on a weekly basis. What we do is we have a 1.5 hour pay for weekdays if we have pager, and 3 hours pay for carrying pager on saturdays, sundays, and holidays. Above this daily charge, if a page comes in we get paid time and a half for every hour we spend working on that specific problem. The one hour rate is defined by our annual salary. I like this system, and have friends who work for other companies that have similar policies.
But the real reason is to get your meat hooks into them, to make it hard for them to fire you or allow you to move on. My solution: all the software we use has manuals written only in Mandarin Chinese and a few in an ancient Incan language of pictograms.
Another way is to use archane security systems that may not be the most effective at keeping out crackers, but work wonders at scaring the crap out of upper management.
Custom software mods. Sure, the head office invested millions in SAP, but they can't get anything to work without your data merging widget, written in an odd flavor of Fortran.
Bwahaha! You have them by the shorties now, my boy!
I am the only IT person at our facility. We have approximately 200 total employees. Approximately 10 percent are frequent to heavy users. Another 5 to 10 person use the system sporadically. We run three shifts, up to seven days a week.
The way it works with myself and factory maintenance personnel at our site, is via an on-call system. In my case there are a couple of people cross trained enough to know enough about systems to be talked through a problem, that way I can take a vacation once in a while.
As far as pay is concerned we get hourly pay for call-ins (standard 1.5 nights and Saturdays and double-time on Sundays), plus mileage to and from wherever. Although if possible I try to take care of the problem via phone or chat/e-mail (if the connections aren't effected.) I can even handle some of the problems through remote connection to the network.
The only pain is filling out the call-in and mileage forms. Nice thing is I get call-in pay even if it can be fixed remotely, sans mileage of course. I still would have liked to have sent them the mileage bill, for the time they called me on the last day of my vacation seven states away. (Handled that one over the phone, [un]fortunately.)
That is an excellent solution.
I am an IT manager, and have to deal with companies who do not have and do not see the value of a pay structure for on call staff.
most bone headed exec's state "that part of the job - I dont care if they dont like it" and I must continually work with the little mentality of the execs to get them to value the techicnical staff that they have and reward them for doing more for the company than a lot of the sales, marketing and mgmt departments combined do.
I make it a point of how much is involved in keeping the systems running smoothly on a continual basis - and have them understand how inconvienient it can be for anyone that must be on-call.
I usually have a hard time convincing these people that their IT staff is a HELL of a lot more important than they realize - so it makes it difficult to get them to compensate with money...
but I am 100% effective in getting other forms of compensation, sometimes in addition to money like:
if there is a problem that requires late night resolution, and it takes considerable effort or time, but is solved before the workday starts - the admin can take time off from work - either that day, or any day he chooses.
or get them some sort of award at the next company meeting - or a fifty dollar gift cert for dinner etc...
the point isnt necessarily the actual compensation - it is the recognition and the fact that the admin knows that his efforts are appreciated.
anyone running a company out there that is reading this - you will see that you will have a happier, more productive staff with less turnover.
otherwise - I would like to see some exec get out of bed at three am and go to the colo, ssh or go to the office to fix some problem. then they will really understand the nature of on-call and how shitty it can actually be. especially when you dont get paid for it.
When I said it has never happened, I meant to say that noone has never had to call someone else into work. Sometimes we do come in if we are On Call.
We tend to ask oncall to be handled by exempt employees (i.e., exempt from getting overtime pay.) It is a responsibility which goes along with the (generally) higher pay of being a salaried employee and state and federal law mandate time-and-a-half or double-time pay for hourly workers who work more than 40 or 60 hours respectively in a week.
Note that in cases where we do have to ask hourly workers to take oncall they are compensated by the oncall policy AND as required by state and federal law.
Hope that helps, -CZ
When the discussion of the "hourly" employees pulling on-call came up, it was made very clear that we would become salaried before that would occur. This was the only real solution to "tether" pay for the hourly emps. The salaried on-call people have a very (VERY) large pool of "oncall" pay that is divied up between the members of that oncall group. This means everyone gets compensated for tether time, and it also means they get cranky if someone comes in to the rotation and no one else went out. Of course, I also work in the equivilent of IT heaven...
I do desktop and network support for a moderate-sized (~300 employees) Internet company. We have an on-call phone that rotates between the four desktop support techs every week. When it is your turn to carry the phone, you carry the phone. When someone calls during the weekend, the call goes to that phone.We are all salaried-exempt, so no overtime, no bonus, no extra payment. When it's your turn to be on call, your weekend is totally fucked, because all you do for two straight days is function as a message center and secretary.
We all carry pagers, as well. Even when we don't have the phone, we're accountable 24 hours a day.
Is this worth is for $35k/yr? No. Do I plan to be here very much longer? No.
I would definitely contact a lawyer about it at some point, simply because the laws affecting your situation could depend on what state you work in.
Depending on which state you live in, state law may or may not trump federal law. Check out the department of labor web site for starting places to explore. If this really is a Fortune 100 company, then they must have the plans in place to deal with this situation. If they don't, they are wide open for a lawsuit. Probably you management either doesn't know the rules or they are trying to get away with it. Go to HR and find out.
I'm salaried and "on-call" and I enjoy my situation very much. Here's why:
1. I'm the administrator over the system that I'm on call for. I have quite a bit of latitude over that system including hardware. So, I make the systems as redundant as possible, hardware-wise so to minimize the calls.
2. I've negotiated a salary that I feel compensates me for being on call. They don't have to pay me extra for being on call, they already are for what I earn.
3. I feel this is fair to both me and my employer. Think of it from their perspective, why should they pay you random (from their perspective) amounts of money to fix something that should have never happened if you knew what you were doing? The on-call part is already part of your contract.
4. The other administrators at work cover for each other if there is a vacation or if someone can't be reached. This hasn't failed us yet.
Finally, I really think this should be viewed from the employer as well. You're hired to make the system work. If it doesn't work, who's fault is it? Yours. You could have advocated purchasing redundent hardware. You could have put it in a cluster. Especially with Linux, you could have made it so it doesn't crash. Why should they have to pay you gobs of money for not doing your job right?
Of course, this only works if your employer is willing to go with your recommendations. If they aren't, the responsibility is theirs and they should get shafted with a big bill to keep you on call and to fix things after hours.
I'm an hourly contractor/employee... whatever I happen to be at the time. If a company wants me to come in on call... there are many things that make the money change... if it is emergency uptime type of situations that I must be ready for... I always demand at least 2x normal hourly income for the hours I have to come in... per say I regularly do 25 an hour... I will up front assure I will make at least 50 an hour for emergency "off hour" calls, and if they intend to have these hours seep into the night, when I SLEEP!! then I would probably ask for even more.
Many employers would balk at this, but I usually can talk them into something decent... it all really depends on what I do also. If it's a job I hate, sometimes I won't even come in... I had "other" more important items to take care of... etc., but if the employer is good to me, and they treat me well with leniant flex time and what not, I will pull my weight x10! It is all dependant on the ppl and the job.
Just my 2 cents though on how to handle this.
I'm not using one yet.
Have a minimum call out period. Say 4 to 8 hours. You have to go in and it only takes 2 hours to get it done (including travel time) then you still get paid the minimum call period. Plus you get $100/week for carrying the pager. Or you become a salary employee and incorporate it into your pay. Only problem with this is your expected to work all time.
That's not his problem. It's his employer's.
In some states, you must be paid for a minimum
of two hours work if you come in. Other states
may vary. Contact your local state labor office.
C//
Employers always want to take advantage of their labour. This is exactly the sort of thing that unionizing would be able to prevent, yet most geeks will scoff and roll their eyes if you even mention it.
Personally, I think the exploitation is worse since IT workers keep the machines running... so the mentality is set up that, since the machines need to run, the IT folks need to always be on call.
When encryption is outlawed, ?o'AZ-,++o+i++##4AoA+-/-C++bI+/.+~
How Do Companies Pay for "On-Call" Support?
The above article asked the same question and there were lots of good responses.
Your best bet would probably be to sell them your soul...i mean...put you on salary.
...All I can say is that my life is pretty strange...
I work for a network consulting firm and we have several maintenance contracts with customers, so we have to take care of their networks when they go down. Our system is this- we have about 5 senior engineers and 8 techs. Each week one tech is the primary contact with one of the engineers backing him up. The primary get paid $100 each week he is on call and the backup get $50 plus any time they are on a call. The techs are hourly, so they get time+1/2, the salaried engineers get straight time, even if it is over 40 hours for the week.
Here's where I came from:
I was also an hourly employee on call for the weekends with no compensation (other than the logged hours on the phone, which we did get paid normal wages for). Like what you are probably experiencing is the fact that you HAVE to stay available for calls. You can't leave town and you can't be social, lest you be interrupted by the leash... err phone. The worst part was that you had to make yourself somewhat available 24 hours a day. I particularily hated those calls that came in at 2am when I was trying to sleep. Not only did I sound grumpy and tired on the phone to the customer, but I'm sure I gave terrible solutions over the phone and in a very hazey manner.
Though, the worst part was when a system fell offline, or some other situation that required you to have to go into the office. We were'nt being compensated for the travel or anything... just the time spent on the phone.
At any rate, I realized that this was a terrible deal and management kept giving me the "Deal with it" look... so I did deal with it; I left. I returned to my previous employer with newfound IT skills and I am getting paid a lot more now. Best of all, no cell phone!
A friend of mine is working (in Europe) for a big company working for banks.
I'll summarize what he told me.
Each week someone is in charge for on call duty. This person is paid for his time (two days, saturday-sunday) even if no intervention is done. And a supplemental bonus is paid based on the length of time between answering the call and returning home after fixing the problem.
My job is salaried and when the on-call rotation falls to me I get a fixed cost-per-hour for hauling the beeper plus overtime pay for the actual time spent responding to a problem.
It's been that way for about seven years and three companies. And I do work in a "right-to-work" state.
Two companies ago the policy changed: when they weren't paying any extra, the on-call guy didn't respond and they tried to fire him for cause. He sued and received some settlement money from the company because the contract didn't give value for value, something about only having to exercise slight care when you're doing something essentially for no extra compensation. Anyway, after the company settled and it became known to the rest of us, some started turning off their beepers and the result was the salary + fixed + overtime plan.
Sunday through Thursday: 1hr/day for pager duty.
Friday to Saturday: 2hrs/day for pager duty.
Holidays: 4hr/day for pager duty.
What if you get called in? Well, then you get 4 hours pay MINIMUM for the call. If you can fix the prob in 2 hours, hit the beer store, if not, well too bad suckah!
g
First of all, ditto all comments on talking to a lawyer & not giving anything said here credence. That noted...
I recall a similar question recently being written in & answered in the LA Times's "Workplace" questions section. The employment professional who answered it said that the situation varies by state, but this is the legal situation in CA:
You are considered to be "working" and therefore must be paid if your movement or behavior is constrained in any meaningful way. That is, if your employer forces you to be at home to answer a call, he must pay you to stay at home because he's constraining your movement. Likewise, if you're on your lunch break yet not allowed to leave the property you must be paid for your lunch break. An example of behavior constraint is being allowed to do whatever you want but having to wear a shirt that advertises the company. You must be paid for being constrained. Thus, it comes down to individual cases for the court to decide if you are indeed meaningfully constrained.
Now, the courts have said that being forced to carry a beeper or cell is not a meaningful restraint on behavior, nor are reasonable localization constraints, where for example a person is told to be within an hour from work at all times should they get beeped. The intent as interpreted from the courts is that no constraint should make it difficult for you to live a normal daily life. The employer does NOT have to pay you for the time you're on-call, as long at they're not making you stay in a certain place or places to be on-call.
However when called in, even if it's just to answer a 5-minute question, they must pay you for the mandated minimum of 2 hours (this counteracts employers over-scheduling people on purpose then sending them off if it's not busy today without compensation). If they call you in they may also be liable to pay you from the moment they NOTIFY you to come in to the time you leave, as opposed to just the time you're there working on the problem.
Lastly, in CA no company can legally mandate overtime for hourly employees nor fire or punish you for not working overtime, though this law is largely flouted. It is always (legally at least) your choice to come in on short notice or not. If you do come in in addition to the standard 40-hr workweek, the requisite time and 1/2 must be paid.
The only tool you've got against psychosis is experience.
I'm a consultant, salary and wish I was hourly. I'm expected to carry a pager one week a month, and work one Saturday a month. I am also expected to work late, work weekends, holidays, travel at a moments notice and recieve nothing to compensate my time. I wish I was hourly and could get some overtime, but I am salary and have to work all sorts of sick hours. IT support should form a union, I would join in a second. Ever since the Y2K scare I have been expected to work crazy hours and not recieve compensation for it. I am not making big bucks, because I am not MS certified, nor do I want to be. My raise sucked this year and was told that if I had passed at least three tests I could have gotten more. Everyone I know who works support and help desk are overworked, underpaid and under appreciated. When someone mentions unions, people act like you are talking about the devil. Not that unions are bad, but if the suits back in the home office drinking Sam Adams on lunch break caught wind of that we would all lose are jobs to the next round of paper MCSEs. I am desperately trying to get into web development, but it is slow learning when you don't have time to spare.
For example, I work on a 1 in 4 rota, so I get £x per month as a flat on-call payment, whether or not I'm paged. If I get paged (and this could be anything from a disaster on an oil platform to someone paging me to find out who is on call), I get a minimum of 3 hours pay for each and every page I get.
This model has been used for years here, and applies equally to both consultants and staff - although the rates will obviously be different.
War is God's way of teaching Americans geography
And yes-- dammit-- you should be paid for your time spent close to shop on call
We take turns carrying a 24hr pager for seven days and get a little $250 check for those seven days. Which is pittance. It should be double and we're working on a plan to do that... heh heh
Otherwise-- hey, you're two hours way at a car show? "Whatdya want me to do about it right now?"
"You may all go to hell and I will go to Texas"
Sen. Davy Crocket to US Congress, Nov. 1, 1835
The ideal situation here is a mixed bag. Since being on call requires you to give up some personal freedom, a flat rate per day/week/month is approipriate. Then above that a per incident rate for each time, outside normal business hours, that you have to leave wherever you are at to tend to work matters.
Where do you want to be, What are you doing to get there.
This will probably be maked flamebait, but I don't care... I, like so many others here I assume, come from a blue collar family. My stepfather works for a water company, so technically he is "on call" always and forever. He can say he can't make it in if something happens, and luckily there's 50 other employees to pester, but I can't count the number of times he had to get dressed again and go out to work at 10pm or something, with no sleep, and go do his job for another 10 hours. And then he got double time, which is nice. Now I am salaried...I get paid for 40 hours - I work 60? Paid 40. Miss some hours due to something? Gotta make them up. My point is, I get irritated when someone whines like this. You actually want to be paid money for carrying a pager around just in case something goes wrong? Is this how spoiled people are becoming in the IT business? It's this kind of attitude, the "I deserve big bucks for little tings" and "I deserve to live like a king without working hard" which has lead to the current dot-bombs. We just play around with computers...we're NOT like firefighters or doctors who are on call and, oh, save lives!
Once upon a time, my boss initiated a project to automate the notification process. We spent $60K on software that would activate alphanumeric pagers, based on whatever conditions we chose to monitor. Of course, we got carried away with this new technology, and pagers were going off everytime a printer ran out of paper. We discovered that the pagers were not a substitute for a second shift of operations. Realizing that compensation was now an issue, the boss tried to get money for the people who were expected to answer the pagers. He failed, and the whole thing ended.
Later, a new boss is on the scene. He thought we could simply rotate coverage (as some of the other posters have suggested). Having lived through the old nightmare, I convinced the new boss that the pagers would set off a labor relations crisis. Assigning responsiblity without assigning pay would simply not fly. Plan B was to use comp-time, but that just opened up a new lack-of-coverage problem during the first shift (solution worse than original problem). I asked questions like "What do you plan on doing when certain people have dead-battery-syndrome whenever it's their turn to be the main contact?" When push comes to shove, the HR department will decide that off-hours coverage is NOT really "work", fearing that any other conclusion will trigger retroactive paychecks. Therefore, no one can be disciplined for not working, since we were not paying.
The new boss was not fully convinced, but that changed fast when one of the remote sites asked us to have a person covering the computer room on Saturdays when they did student registration. Then another site asked for Saturday coverage just in case the Internet went down while a class was in session. I asked the new boss "You want to give them Saturday? Fine, just tell me which of the other days you want to delete!"
In general, I had hard-working people who were willing and able to work crazy hours (sometimes uncompensated) just because they knew it was important. Things got out of hand when their goodwill was abused (first by software, later by chronic whiners who caused most of their own problems).
After evaluating lots of non-options, we had essentially two choices: One was to give the pagers to the people without any specific schedule, hoping that at least one person would respond in a crisis. The other was to take away the pagers completely, in the absence of a viable compensation system.
Eventually, we hired another person who worked a staggered shift with the first shift people, on a Tuesday through Saturday basis. Everyone carried a pager, with the understanding that if the evening guy called, it was one of your colleages asking for help. The paging activity dropped to almost nothing, service availability was improved, and we found all kinds of off-peak things for the evening/Saturday person to take care of.
I work for a utility company that has the same policy. Namely, you don't get paid for being on-call unless you actually have to come in. The only exceptions are a few particular classes of hourly wage non-exempt employees.
Your best bet, if your management is willing, might be to negotiate some sort of separate compensation for on-call employees. (i.e., you probably aren't going to be able to convice the Powers That Be to pay full-time, or even half-time wages for you to not be at work.)
Good luck to you,
Leliel
That thou'st pager does not page whilst ""The Sopranos" are on.
The only thing that we learn from history is that nobody learns anything from history.
The issue is, when you are required to be on call, not the if they get a hold of you, type of calls, for example I used to work for a fortune 100 company as a contractor, and the rules there were quite simple, when on call as the primary contact, you can not go out of town, you can not drink, and you must remain within a 20 minute response time of the datacenter. The only extra time you get paid for is when they actually call you, but what about anything else? If I can't go out after work on a friday and have a beer because I'm on call-- because I'm working, I should be paid for that time.
Personally, I think the exploitation is worse since IT workers keep the machines running... so the mentality is set up that, since the machines need to run, the IT folks need to always be on call.
That's right, friends, what's more important to your boss is the machine. Not you.
This is quite evident to most people who work on production lines doing highly technical work. The reason technically skilled people are so unique is that they can fit themselves into the little box of functionality determined by the technology's requirements. To the bosses, this isn't like the requirements of an artist, which include freedom of some sort.
The economy is crashing and many people find that they can locate more replaceable machine-servants than they could in the upswing.
So, in accordance to your lesser value, IT on call staff, your flexibility is gone, and your job perks are gone, and you see your job as the stark situation that it is-- slavery to the machine.
This is the kind of work that would benefit from independent collectives of people each knowing the same group of machines and being interchangably knowledgable about them. But companies like as few people as possible to have access to their system.
Goat sex free since 2001
I was exactly in the same case. (Fortune 100 company etc.) My experience is that the only reason you do not get money is that your managers are too lazy to get compensation arranged with HR. As far as HR is concerned, they could not care less whether you receive naught or the exponential of your salary as compensation, the only thing they hate is they have to sign additional checks, and "setup a procedure" which seems like a lot of work to them... Negotiations with HR definitely leave a Dilbert aftertaste, so, be patient if your manager needs some time to get anywhere. As a matter of principle we arranged that only team leaders or project managers would get the pager before the agreement was reached, got everyone's motivation aligned. Team leaders got compensated, but not PM as they participated to the negotiation. About seeking legal advice... sounds very expensive, as hiring a lawyer will very probably at least get your bonus cancelled. This is true if, as in my case, you start having to support something, if you are in a group where such thing always existed and never was paid, do as everyone in the group leave, or if you love support, tell your manager that is the only way to have a decent "retention level".
I'm sure someone else has posted similarly by now (judging from the lag bring this page up at work today!) but we were in a similar situation at one time. We negotiated on-call compensation in the following manner: $1/hour (Yes, that's one US dollar) for 5PM to 7AM on weeknights (Monday night through Friday morning). One-fourth of the base hourly rate for the job for weekend hours. Holidays to be paid 24 hours at the weekend rate (i.e. the holiday starts and ends at midnight). On most weeks, this means that I make 12*H+80 additional dollars when I'm on call. (H being my hourly rate, 12 being the 48 weekend hours that I get one fourth of my pay for, and 80 being hte number of hours at one dollar). We rotate being on-call to prevent the burden being in one person all the time, but this requires a bit of cross-training for all concerned to handle the most probable issues and doesn't work at every outfit.If you get called when it's not your turn, you get paid at the overtime rate for any time you have to put in.
Texas is rahter vague on this subject by only defining when an employer is *NOT* liable for paying "on-call" employees.
62.054. Certain Employees Subject to Call
An employer may not be required to pay an employee who lives on the premises of a business and who is assigned certain working hours plus additional hours when the employee is subject to call for more than the number of hours the employee actually works or is on duty because of assigned working hours.
Acts 1993, 73rd Leg., ch. 269, 1, eff. Sept. 1, 1993.
So it's safe to say that Texas requires pay for being "on-call" but I suspect that if you are salaried, that it covers that circumstance. In short, you have to negotiate for that circumstance as part of your emplyment agreement. If you are hourly, again, it's up to you to negotiate that amount, but Texas does require payment unless you actually live on premisis. So, in Texas, if you don't live there and you are paid hourly, then they are required to pay you. If they have not negotiated the amount in advance, I think it's arguable, since they have to pay you for being on-call, that you can PRESUME full-rate pay.
So if you're in Texas, are paid hourly and you don't live at the site, then you can actually start your negotiations by filing for back/past-due wages at the full rate. Of course, it's best to consult with a lawyer before telling the boss you want back pay for 2,000 hours of work. It could be really upsetting to a company to discover that you are demanding another $50,000 for the time spent "on-call" when you were at home sleeping during those hours. At the very least, they will come to the table to discuss "on-call" status and then you can bring up the laws and practices of other states' rates from 20-25%.
Since I'm Salaried, I don't get to play that game. Sad too because it sounds like a fun game.
that it is not legal to keep you on call without pay as you describe, though the law may vary from state to state. On the other hand if you're working for a fortune 100 it might not matter if it's legal or not; they make many of the laws.
Maskirovka
I've been carrying one for years. The difference is that now I have the luxury of turning it off between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. Here is the old, traditional, and fair way of doing it:
If you are earning an hourly wage, they should pay you a small differential for the times you carry the pager outside of normal working hours--like the second or third shift differential paid in some companies. The minute it goes off, and you go on the clock, you should be paid your normal hourly rate, plus overtime if you've already worked your full quota for the day, week, or however it's handled where you are. Your obligation in exchange for that differential is to answer the page in a timely fashion.
Do you need a lawyer? Or do you need to gather information provided by the folks reading Slashdot, who are reporting to you from the trenches, so that you can discuss the issue with your manager in a coherent, low-key fashion?
Cheers,
Annie
DUCT TAPE: The Election Supervisors' Secret Weapon
Observation: You should not be an hourly employee Advice: You need a lawyer, not a bunch of /.ers
Why shouldn't he be an hourly employee? I've been hourly on-call before and salaried on-call, and I ALWAYS got paid extra for hourly on-call positions (whereas I never got paid for on-call on salaried jobs). In mny opinion, if you have to be on-call, hourly pay is the only way to go.
I also find it rather odd that this same question came up a couple months ago but got totally different responses. At that time, it was 600 posts about how each person was compensated for on-call time at their specific job. This time around it's a couple hundred people screaming "get a lawyer or quit!"
I used to work for a big company in Austin and there was always an "unspoken deal". I'd work late without pay or get up in the middle of the night to dial in to check our computer systems when there were problems, and in exchange they wouldn't dick me around about long lunches or coming in a bit late. My supervisor appreciated what I was doing because overtime pay was forbidden but the need was real, and I was glad not to be punching a time-clock. The nice part for my bosses was "plausible deniability". I sometimes thought about challenging the "unspoken deal" but never did.
We do on call rotations, and are paid hourly. We're paid two hours per day for on call work, whether we take a page or not. If we're paged, and the resolution takes over two hours (or if we have several pages and the time spent totals over two hours) then we charge in that time spent. Seems pretty straightforward to me.
rm -fr
In the spirit of the GNU open source work for no pay ideals, you should really not ask for any pay at all. Instead, collect "donations" from individuals who benefit from the network you maintain!
___
The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason. --Ben Franklin
I've worked for a few companies that wanted to do the same. Watch our systems all day and night but we'll only pay when there is a problem. The only one that didn't was a hospital (they know on-call status). There i was paid $1.50 extra while wearing the pager and received a two hour minimum when there was a problem.
From what I understand, it depends on whether you are a contractor or not. In your case, you are not.
If you are hired as a contractor, they can pay you for when you are actually working, without paying you for being on call.
However, if you are an employee, I think they have to pay you for being available. I have been offered an on-call job before, and was going to be paid for 40hrs/wk + overtime -- whether I worked 40 or not. I could see them also paying you a different rate when you are there vs. when you are not. If you are a paid employee though, I think they have to pay you for being on call.
The two places I would check with would be the Secretary of States office (different rules for each state?) or possibly ask a well-known on-call profession (Doctor at a Hospital?)....
http://www.google.com/profiles/malachid
I've worked at places that provide a base for being on call, for example $50 to be on call this weekend. Then, if a call happens, it was time and a half for the actual hours worked. If they refuse to pay you a base for being on call I would contact a labor lawyer and get guidance. Legally, I don't think they can restrict your off work activities without compensating you in some way. If they make you stay in the area, then you are performing work for them and should be compensated.
He who dies with the most toys...... has one heck of a family battle over the will
I worked for some time for a hospial in Austin, TX, and they are of course a 24-hr operation. Here's how we had coverage set up:
We had an 'operator' for 1st, 2nd and 3rd shift, 24/7. 2nd, 3rd, and weekend people were generally not very skilled, but the regular tech people trained them over time to be able to deal with most basic situations. So they answered the phones, and called us when they needed to.
All the techs were on a rotating schedule where they carried the pager 24/7 for one week out of every five. Administrators were one week out of 4, and there were only 2 WAn people, so they traded off. There was a strict escalation from operator to tech support to admin to WAN, and no deviation was allowed.
Payment was $2/hr from 7PM to 7AM, and all day Sat. and Sun. That comes to $216 for the week you wore the pager. If you got paged and called in, you got paid an automatic hour of overtime (plus the 2nd or 3rd shift pay differential, which was 7% or 10% respectively). If you went into the office, you got 2 hours of automatic overtime. Any time over 2 hours was at 1.5* normal, plus the differential. Getting a call at 2AM on Saturday night added an extra 25% to the pay rate, 10% 3rd shift and 15% weekend diff.
Now, since it was a hospital, they already had a policy in place to compensate people for working nights and weekends. YMMV, but for us the basic structure worked well: $2/hr for being on call regardless of what happens, 1hr overtime for using the phone, a minimum 2hrs for going in.
Sometimes I could make an extra $500 in a week... I started picking up other people's pager time when they wanted out of it.
Eventually the calls dwindled as we got the operators trained and all the old crappy PC's replaced, but occasionally the paper would jam in the ER admissions printer and I'd make a quick $60 to go re-align it for them...
Good luck getting the compensation.
Whatever happened to JonKatz?
And you start off with:
Employers always want to take advantage of their labour. This is exactly the sort of thing that unionizing would be able to prevent, yet most geeks will scoff and roll their eyes if you even mention it.
Is it any wonder why /. readers tend to see unionists as aggressive bullies itching for a fight? ;)
(Not to mention that the whole 'bully' thing is probably a sore spot with most slashdotters..
Ed
my situation was very similar:
Our employer (large telco who probably also employs Mr. Coward) would mandate special authorization to leave town even when we were not on call. This was not a huge problem since it was in our job description as support employees.
Everyone would take turns carrying the pager. This was a sweet deal for contractors because even a 15 minute response at 3am ended up getting billed for a full hour. Not getting paged was a rarity. Of course there was no
sleep, but that also was the nature of the job. Once again, this was in the job description--nothing to complain about.
When we were made to become salaried employees, and people who refused to do so left, however, it started getting questionable:
-overtime was anything above 45 hours. We got paid for 40. Everyone worked at least 50 (mandatory). So every month I had at around 20 hrs of unpaid time.
-we would take turns being on call (which became 'on site') on national holidays. We would get no extra pay for this, even though holidays were supposedly a benefit.
-full 8-9 hour shifts were mandatory even after 4-5 hour nightly on calls. We had one guy simply 'break' and just abandon the job. Most of us came close.
My advice:
If you're contracting, stay a contractor, and bill
all time you work (so Coward has little to complain about). Do NOT become salaried.
Otherwise, try monster.com (which I did)!!!
It boils down to this: support employees will be abused. It [support] is a good thing to do if you need the money, or are making a lot of it. Otherwise, fighting the system is pointless, since nobody expects you to last more than 18 months or so anyway. Any other type of employee would probably have unionized, but somehow that does not work in the geek world. Why not? Are we too independent, too disorganized, or do we simply make too much money to care?
Our group has a casual and appreciative boss who gives us comp time to make up for off-hours work. I've been here for over a year, and have yet to use any of my vacation or sick time, yet I've taken scattered days off for sick or fun.
Observation: You should not be an hourly employee Advice: You need a lawyer, not a bunch of /.ers
No good deed goes unpunished...
Though I'm not in the IT industry (I work in health care), my employer handles oncall at the rate of $75 a night for Pharmacist, and $50 a night for everyone else. ...and if I get called out, the hours from when I leave my house till when I actually get home are billable. I consider this a fair practice and adequate compensation.
Tim'
Blessed Be, Sacred Salt
I used to work for a large ISP in the UK that was spending a lot of time on putting people on 24/7 due to unreliable kit from manufacturers. The Director of Ops felt we might be "fixing" kit to make the most out of call-out pay (ISP being the lowest paying sector possible), so decided to swap the tables around.
For one of our customers, we had to be tested by an independent company to match to an SLA in terms of dial-up performance, speed of access, etc. so the scheme worked like this:
A pot of cash was put up - say $6,000/month. If we did far better than the SLA stated, the whole lot was up for grabs. If we got just inside, $4,000 was up for grabs. If we missed the SLA, no money was available.
What would then happen is that for every day a person did remote call-out they got a point. If they drove into work to fix something, they got an extra point. If they did a whole day at the weekend, they got an extra 2 points, etc.
At the end of the month, all the points were added up, and the amount available from the performance we had acheived was divided by this number of points, giving money per point. This was then awarded accordingly. I left after making about $10,000 on this scheme over 6 months, but I know one guy who still works there doubled his salary on this.
What's more, the network is in better shape too, as it has to meet high standards for the money to be paid out. Quite effective really.
This line intentionally left here to annoy you.
I remember my first Job in IT/IS/MIS/(whatever else they call the work of a martyr); it was great. I was getting benefits and travel compensation, as well as $28.00/hour. This may not sound like a lot (For New York/San Francisco); after 40 hours this started to rack up dough pretty quickly.
Then came the day I was offered the coveted Salary. Oh, paid vacation! Oh, getting paid when I'm not around. Oh, getting ripped off and having to work un-compensated overtime and having various people call you at all hours. What happened to the days of the Hawaiian shirt, waking up at 9:30, and just knowing it all (compared to lusers where the PEBKAC - I would not presume to know it all) and working late when the servers crashed or messed up.
The suit and tie replaced khakis and polo (I didn't mind dressing up, its like a uniform - and always looks kind of nice). The boss and every co-worker felt like weekends and sick days and vacation days were open season because I was the one who implemented most of the 30 servers in the main location. Never mind the fact the servers has good uptime and were well documented, these people didn't know how to USE the software they were 'professionals' in. When I went away to Mexico one year, I left my cell phone home, and the stupid pager. When I got back there were 40+ messages which were dent to null immediately.
People and Employers don't get it. I use to work late without overtime almost every day in NYC, it's part of the work culture there. People used to get very upset with this guy, Vlad, who basically worked nine to five. I used to say "Lets unite! If we all work nine to five, we will send a message to the management that we need more personnel". This advice fell on deaf ears - the toiling continued.
I am by no means complaining outright, I feel that I am lucky and am well compensated. Work does encroach on my life from time to time, and I resent it. I think its ridiculous and unfair. I work at a Si Valley startup now, so I am less resentful. Everyone works overtime, and the risk and added work is supposed to be rewarded by shares.
It is painful for me to be the pivotal person here, the bridge between the engineers and the marketing whores and others. I have to explain the subterfuge and lameness of the lusers to the engineers, and have to hold the hands of the lusers and explain that people on *nix platforms like PDFs, not work documents, and that HTML mail doesn't play nice. Or how to make a VPN connection. Or how to dial up and ISP. Or how to get a DSL "router" NAT box or wireless network for the home. Or do something else that is overtly simple. The list goes on forever.
I think the service groups in various companies should start valuing their employees, most of the time the only way to send a message is to walk. I've walked with great success, always getting more money each time I hop. It's not about the money for me, it's about being worn to the bone. It about being expected to be superman always by lusers. You should have seen the face on this person whose hard disk failed. "I can replace the hard drive, sure, no problem." "Will I get all my data back?" "No, You never backed it up. You were told many times how to back it up and failed to do so." "I thought it was automatic."
Christ, if you were to tell a professor in University that your floppy died and you lost your project, you would at best get a ~day~, maybe less to produce it. Most of the time you would just fail. These people have graduated from the world of school to the world of being a fetus with a big body in the workplace.
I think IT/MIS/IS/blah should be seen as valued. Companies should train their employees, and increase support. Think of it, when you call {Insert publicly traded technology company here, e.g., HP, Dell} you hate waiting for service, and you hate how stupid the tech support is most of the time. I think of myself as someone who is a pleasure to deal with, I'm polite, like to crack a few jokes, and always try my hardest to get the job done well and in a timely fashion. No, instead, these companies have to bleat to the shareholder, not pay/eliminate good people and as consumers get the shaft.
In a company, the people you support are the consumers, the customers. And people are getting crappier and crappier service because decent people like myself are getting disgruntled and pissed. So they fleet of DeVRY graduates takes my place, from flipping burgers to re-ghosting machines every time they see an application error they don't understand.
Companies and managers - keep the good ones around, pay them more and try not to tell them how to do their jobs. Fire people who don't tow the line, and give the good ones gophers and underlings. You will be rewarded. Start paying out overtime instead of "comp. days," which are a total crock since you page them anyway!
I honestly wish I was still on hourly.
Best of luck to all my fellow MIS/IT/IS/blah support people - may the force of fairness be with us!
Legalize the constitution. Think for yourself question authority.
Yeah, perhaps IT / IS doesn't get paid for their time when being on call. But we are very well paid people in general, and look at the fringe bennefits we get.
1 - We like what we do
2 - I've never worked anywhere that doesn't have a flexible schedule
3 - We can deny access to people because they looked at us wrong
4 - We can read anyone's email
If we do our job right, we don't get those 3am phone calls. Ok, so sh*t does happen and a beeper goes off in the middle of the night.
I think it all balances it out.
We take turns with the on call pager and we get paid an extra 2 hours per day that we carry it and an extra 3 hours per day on Saturday and Sunday. If we have to respond, we get time and half, double time on Sunday.
I would think contacting a lab lawyer would be in your best interest. However, for your own personal research, contact someone in the health care industry. Nurses on call are paid- albeit, a seemingly low amount, however, they much be scheduled officially for the hours they are on call and must be paid accordingly. It seems other industries have already gone through this fight with their employers. Goodluck.
I would think contacting a labor lawyer would be in your best interest. However, for your own personal research, contact someone in the health care industry. Nurses on call are paid- albeit, a seemingly low amount, however, they much be scheduled officially for the hours they are on call and must be paid accordingly. It seems other industries have already gone through this fight with their employers. Goodluck.
i work for a fortune 100 company as well... all of our on-call support dudes are contractors, with provisions in their contracts i'm sure for weird hours... your problem is that you're an hourly employee... rather than fight the byzantine management vacilitude i'm sure you are to face by bringing this up (mr. division head to his middle-management underlings: "what did you say? are you telling me IT is unionizing?!" ;-P ) you should adapt a "if you can't beat 'em join 'em" approach and just become a contractor ;-)
;-)
incidentally, whoever posted this question unintentionally invented a description for your particular ailment in the title of the post: "underpaidinitis"
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
First --- Are you a contractor or an employee?
I am a contractor. My client knows if they ask me for something -- they get charged. I do it fairly , and rarely do I have to do overtime. The reason is they do not budget for OT.
If you are an employee --- my condolences. Anything duty you do not perform as a submissive slave will be held against you. I know -- I have been in that position before. That is why I got out and became a contractor.
In addition to not have to worry about extended hours for OT. I have the flexibility to work on another of my pet projects (see the URL below).
Companies can promise flex time, and other incentives.. but these are mostly just talk. Take advantage of these and they will take advantage of you.
David Byrd
CEO - 21st Century Tech., Inc.
URL: http://www.nite-surfer.com
David Byrd
CEO - 21st Century Tech., Inc.
URL: http://www.nite-surfer.com
See our Illuminated Keyboard
Why bother leaving? Bring in your fridge, alcohol, ice cream, PS2, inflatables, woofers, pets, you name it. You will be _SO_ on-call nobody will be able to fault you! The company will even save on some of them horribly expensive mobile phone calls. And when the performance of your colleagues drops (mysteriously), you'll look even better! Of course, don't take my advice. Call a lawyer. Like everybody's been saying here :)
--
When on call, employees in my organization receive a 10% pay increase and straight pay for any actual work (in .5 hour increments, so it's great when you can correct the problem in 5 minutes without being aroused in the middle of the night). In addition, if we actually have to hit the road and come into the office, we automatically get a minimum of 2 hours straight pay. The only downside to being on-call is that you absolutely must respond (no excuses), you should remain within 30 minutes of the office, and you have to lay off the bottle.
-griffm
I work at a telecommunication company as a UNIX sysadmin. We also use the On Call procedure. It's like this:
mon-fri from 17:00 - 08:00 say $50 a day
sat-sun say $75 a day
and with this we have CALL UP (don't have to go to the company) and CALL IN (have to go to the company). CALL IN is better paid because you have to leave the house. But here we have laws about these things so they (the companies) have to have something like this.
I have been doing this type of work for years now and have never been paid hourly. I am paid salary, so I would say you are pretty lucky to get paid for your OT at all.
I would love to be paid Hourly in the IT industry. Considering all the OT I put in and the long weekends lost due to outages and system upgrades. I would be sitting on easy street right now. I would be logging in and checking system health ( of course billing all the time) constantly! Dumb ass quit complaining, you have it good. Please forward the Fortune 100 co that employs you. I would like a new job ....
The company I work for pays $1000 / month to carry the pager plus $150 per call ( outside of business hours ).
I worked for a dot com at my last job. I was the only IT/IS dude to support all the servers and all the desktops. I was on call 24/7. My cellphone rang constantly at all hours. I was a flat salary employee. I went on vacation to Vegas and they called me there 4 times in four days. They actually got upset with me because "I wasn't very helpful" while on vacation. It was then that I knew I needed a change. I left for a job at a large global Aerospace Company here in Seattle (you figure it out). I'm only on call one week out of 40. I get paid for all hours logged of actual hands on work. Plus my regular hours, plus overtime. And I'm salaried. Odd mix indeed eh? I'm smiling all the way to the bank. My peers here are asking for pay while sitting at home waiting for the pager to go off. It's a reasonable request IMHO. We can't go out of town. We can't go out in town without risking bailing in the middle of a movie to make a mad dash to a dialup to log onto the network to figure out what broke this time. And doing that on dialup sux! I don't dare go out on the town in downtown Seattle and leave the laptop (ball & chain) in my truck. It'll get ripped off in a flash. I'm happy with my job but it only seems reasonable to ask for fair pay to babysit a pager and laptop 24/7 for a week straight. On the good side my employer pays for all my education needs, and that's about $6,000.00 a year these days with the rate M$ is cranking out new server OS's. I get kudo's for my efforts and it's rather kewl flying in our product to Technet each year, all expenses paid of course. If you're stuck in a place that eats you up for free, start looking because Nirvana is out there! A satisfied IT Dude.
Sig?! Sig?! We don't need no stinking sig!!
The company I work for pays a weekly "beeper bonus" for all those on call. You get $50/week extra to carry it plus a higher hourly rate if you get called in. We're paid well to begin with, but you'd be surprised how many people volunteer to be on call for that extra fifty bucks.
I'm also aware that many banks pay an "on-call" fee to employees responsible for keeping ATM machines full of cash over weekends.
I certainly cannot speak for everyone, and every company handles on-call differently, but after several months of working with management, here is what our company decided...we are hourly wage, and we are paid for 1 hour for every hour we are on-call. There are four admins, so we rotate the group pager from Sunday through Saturday, on a weekly basis. We are also paid for any time we spend onsite after-hours. Hope this helps...