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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."
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
-
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.
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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.)
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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).
I'm with you!
I'm paid a reasonable (not really large, but reasonable) salary, to code, develop, build, admin, etc etc.. and have a pager on 24/7.
I really don't get paid overtime, but I do get flexability during the working week if I've worked over, I'm allowed to take paid days off without them counting against my vacation days (within reason of course), I get a nice office with a real door and window to the big blue room. I get to have a cat at work. I get respect from my bosses (who are some of the most respectable folks I've ever worked for), I get new toys. I get to develop stuff for our industry that noone has ever done before. I'm allowed plenty of time for R&D, and deadlines for projects are extremely flexable, mostly "when it works right".
My salary isn't massive, but it's decent for the area I live in. I get nice annual raises (~10%) and x-mas bonuses. I have great benifits (health, dental, vision).
I think it's a *great* deal, and am happy where I am at. I also know that my job is *secure*.
So, I too, have absolutely no problem with a salaried arrangment.
Run. I like water. Push My rutabaga.
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.
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
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Kevin Fox
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.
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;
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.
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.
Heh, by the time they get done filling out all the paperwork after an arrest, it's usually time to go home anyways. =P
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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?
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.
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.
As a contractor, you are saying, "I will farm out my labor to you for $xx/hour, overtime or not for as many hours as I can work and you need me to work." Well, not exactly, you can certainly negotiate overtime pay for over 40 hours, I've done it. Hell, you can theoretically negotiate overtime pay for every hour over five -- but I don't know many employers that will bite. As a contractor, you are bound to the terms of the contract you sign when you start working, whatever the terms of that contract are. Keep in mind you are not an employee of said company, you are just doing work for them.
As an hourly employee, you are directly working for the company, and they are required by law to give you time and a half for any hours over 40. There's also a lot of laws about break times, and other things, but I haven't been a true hourly employee in so long, I can't remember.
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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.
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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
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!
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
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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.
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/
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.
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Nicotine free Amish .sig.
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
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
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 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.
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.
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
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
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
It seems to me that in many ways it would be less fair, though. Maybe being salaried means different things in different companies, but it's been my experience that being salaried meant being paid the same amount no matter how many hours you worked. Now, that's a pretty fair system when the company doesn't care how much you work - only that you turn out product (of whatever kind) at a rate that they approve of.
But, it seems to me that any job where they are basically paying you to be a warm body (as opposed to paying you for finishing projects) should be an hourly job. After all, in the case of on-call time, they aren't paying you to write code, they are paying you (or should pay you) to wait around until you're needed. That seems like a classic example of the need for an hourly wage for some jobs.
Now, if there are cases where you can be salaried *and* get overtime, well, then that's a different story... I've just never seen that actually happen.
Wind
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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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
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
There's a survey report available on this subject, but the full text is $395.
Sucks to be you, dude.
I'm a sysadmin, I'm salaried, and I'm on call 24/7/365 (not counting vacation time). My job consists of two major functions: 1) work on projects, and 2) be available at any time to fix my projects when the engineers break them.
What does this mean? It means I put it a good 30-40 hours a week in the office, going to meetings, working on my projects, &c. It also means I have a pager and a cell phone, and I must respond to them at any time - even if I'm not able to do the work, I still need to be available to monitor progress, coordinate effort, and provide status reports to the higher-ups.
In exchange for this, I am paid a sizeable annual salary and enjoy excellent benefits. I don't really have a problem with this arrangement.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
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.
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".
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.
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
... 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
"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.
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
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.
FunkyDemon
Hmmm. Must be nice. I work in a hospital, not in IT but doing hands-on patient care, etc. When I'm on call I need to carry a pager, be available to work within 20min of a page, etc. For this, I get the princely wage of US$2/hour while on call. Somehow priorities seem a little backwards here. The people who are call to service machines get a decent compensation, but those who get called in to deal with mere people in emergencies get $2/hour for their on call time. It's not as if I do unskilled work, either. I have two college degrees, professional license, etc. Most of the IT staff is lucky to have a 2 year technical college degree. -John
I was working at one of the Top 5 banks of the world and we had the same issue. Here is how we dealt with it: - In a group of 5 we rotated on a weekly basis. Everybody was responsible to be on call for 7 days straight.
- We got paid (without incidents) roughly 60$/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.
I worked at Stratus Computer (the first incarnation) for many years, part in Engineering and part in Customer Service, both supporting Networking products, so this is at the beginning of the '90s. Stratus, founded in 1981, was a manufacturer of symmetric, truely fault-tolerant multiprocessors (at that time transitioning from an MC68k to an i860 processor base). Stratus was #2 in volume to Tandem. Stratus was selling into markets where it was bad mojo if machines fell over or just didn't do the right thing. Front-ends for ATMs in the field, for interbank wire transfers, running software than _ran_ paper mills, casinos, Enhanced 911 and 999 services. Machines that made sure two chunks of plutonium never got too close together at the processing plant. Stuff businesses, and sometimes people's lives _really_ depended on. They strove to have a first-class customer service organization, and to keep and retain that caliber of people, they we're pretty good to us, more than just lots of t-shirts.
Back when 'mobile' phones were 'transportable' or 'bag phones'. It was expected that you'd carry a pager (all business days), and most folks carried 'em 7x24 anyway. When on-call there were actual service levels that had to be provided to the customer, that meant no more than 15 minutes to a phone (and the customer) & 30 minutes to a terminal (dialed into to their system), 7x24, and you would work or manage the issue until it was resolved, or you could pass it on to the day crew...
At a movie ? leave. Just ordered dinner, get the bill and head home. There were two levels of on-call, and they were front-ended by 24x7 front-line dispatchers who took calls, and could get a system up and running from a down state. Within each specialty (OS, DB, Comms, etc.) there were usually one 'Primary' on-call person, and one or more secondary on-call persons.
The primary had the stringent guidelines as above, and in return for a one-week on-call would be compensated 5% of what they made in a quarter per week of on-call - that comes out to be your salary for a week plus 65% of your salary if you were on-call that week. Secondary was half the compensation, and slightly longer response times - you were there primarily because of your depth of knoweldge to back up the primary on-call. Some of the highest level technical people were basically on-call 365x24, and paid for it.
The company had on-call personal both in North American as well as in multiple customer service centers around the world.
I don't think I've heard or seen of any on-call compenstation like it since.
Seen it. Roomate is salaried (too low, IMHO). Some times he'll come in Sundays or late nights... they have negotiated that they will get the equivalent of 1 1/2 hrs pay for sundays or all weekend things and comp-time.
Face it, people are stupid, and the internet is the place where they all meet.
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 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'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.
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.
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.
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
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".
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.
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.
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 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
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?
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.
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.
Let me clear things up for you. Yes Corporation who hire you have the right to expect thier employees to work, however in this case, his employer is not paying him for the the service he provides, ie being on call. He has the right to recieve a fair days pay for a fair days work and if he is not, then he has two options, quit and find another job or try to change his current employers policy. I personally feel it is better to try the latter and only the former if the employer is unreasonable and refuses to negotiate a fair settlement, such as half pay while on call, or being allowed to take the time worked off at another time and still get paid.
I know I will get flamed for this, because it sounds too much like a labor union, but remember there is strength in numbers. If you go it alone, you will probably be ignored, but if you can get a few or better yet all of your co-workers who are in the same situation to confront your employer at the same time, you are more likely to get results, after all 1 person is easy to replace, 10 are not.
Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power - Benito Mussoli
I've worked either as a consultant , contractor or an employee at a number of different support organisations, and a number of different rules applied. Note also that this was in Australia, where employment conditions are generally a tad more enlightened ( or socialist if you prefer ) than the US. Organisation 1. Company with a 3 Letter Name who does IT services globally Employees who were on call and carried a pager or mobile were had specific response times to call back on being contacted, and were not allowed to drink etc when on call. There were also response times requried to arrive on site, so this imposed defacto how far you could venture away from the urban area. These guys were paid a retainer for carrying the means of contact for being on call, but were not paid for being called out, there was a formula of time in lieu leave based on how long they were called out for. Note that these guys had a second tier call out person as well , who had LONGER response times, and recieved a lower retainer. If they were activated because the on call person was commited to a job, they got the higher rate pro rata. Organisation 2 Different company with a 3 letter name that delivers IT services globally Conditions were somewhat similar to the above, except they didn't have the second string backup person. The support services these guys provided attracter a per hour charge on a call out , paid by the client. These guys paid a similar rate to the first Organisation, but rather than time in lieu, if you were called out, you were paid an hourly rate over and above salary. Suffice to say that the company made about twice as much per hour than the employee if they were called out. Organisation 3 Small IT consulting Firm Carrying the on call device attracted a retainer based on the percieved likelyhood of a callout. Staff on call for organisations percieved as having a high call out risk got a HIGHER retainer, and those on call for a lower call out risk got a lower retainer. In addition, the employee would fill out an after hours work form, and had the option of an hourly rate, or time off in lieu calculated by a formula. Generally the clients whose after hours support was frequent, and had the higher fixed retainer, attracted a lower per hour payment and less leave, and the clients whose call outs were rare, had a higher per hour rate and more leave. Note that even for clients who payed a flat fee for support, and didn't pay a per hour rate for after hours , the employees still were compensated, but then time in lieu was the only option. Stuff that I think can be learned from this: The company giving people time off for call outs can be a low cost win-win situation, because people who have been awake for 4 days straight shouldn't be handling your companies business critical systems. If being on call is part of a position, then the base salary or hourly rate can be loaded so that is reflective that you are on call for a certain proportion of your time. If your call out availability periods are on a less rigid roster, and it can be more random who gets it, then a per callout period payment is probably more fair to all. When I was a team leader in once of the organisations, I had the authority to approve leave, and I would be giving people time off if they worked excessive hours because of call outs . For example if a guy worked all day in the office, and then was up most of the night on a call out, in addition to his bonus hourly rate, he got time off the next day as well, so that he either turned up that day or the next in a fit state to accomplish useful work. Basically if the junior managers are given sufficient discretion, they can come up with quite fair and equitable schemes.
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
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 :)
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