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Labor Laws - Florida State, On-Call
Zyre
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I work for my employer 40hrs/wk regularly. On my days off I am On-Call, meaning if someone calls off for a shift I have to come in.
I have a couple of questions. First, is it legal for employer to mandate that I be on call during all of my time off? Second, if I'm on-call, but don't get called in, shouldn't I be getting paid to be on call?
I do get on-call pay when I am called in, which is more than my regular. I've never worked for an employer set up like this before, typically my previous employers have flex people or special response people, that are on call all the time, that's their job, to cover for people. But my current employer does not have these positions. Everyone in the office is on call on their days off.
I have a couple of questions. First, is it legal for employer to mandate that I be on call during all of my time off? Second, if I'm on-call, but don't get called in, shouldn't I be getting paid to be on call?
I do get on-call pay when I am called in, which is more than my regular. I've never worked for an employer set up like this before, typically my previous employers have flex people or special response people, that are on call all the time, that's their job, to cover for people. But my current employer does not have these positions. Everyone in the office is on call on their days off.
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If you do, then that's that.
If not, then you should be paid whenever you have to field calls and do stuff.
we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
This goes beyond state and actually can be in violation of the FLSA if they're doing certain things and not compensating you for it. If you can, give more information.
How far away are you allowed to go on call, can you travel a half hour to see your friends?
Can you give 4 hours to see a movie and dinner or are you expected to answer immediately, or something along those lines?
Are you expected to work from the phone or just show up at work?
Are you expected to drop everything and go to work while on call?
How often are you actually called? (is this frequent?)
Generally if you're expected to drop whatever you're doing and show up at work, even if you almost never get called, you can't utilize your own free time and are supposed to be paid. If you have to take phone calls like a support person while on call, for instance, is another thing too.
You may want to talk to a lawyer.
Not quite right. Most of my company's DBA's and IT techs are salaried (often high salaried), but they get overtime for On-Call time if they actually work, though most have rotations.
Ultimately, this is the main concern for your questions. All too often there are thing that are incorrect legally in this sort of thing but you have to ask yourself if bringing it up is worth immediate termination.
Because in Florida that is usually the resolution for calling your employer on it.
"Salaried" means different things in different jurisdictions.
In the province of Manitoba, unless your contract includes a set number of hours, then your "Salary" entitles the company to 40 hours of your time per week, no more than 8 hours per day. If they have you work more than 8 hours in a day or 40 hours in a week, the additional hours have to be calculated as 1.5 times your hourly wage (as calculated by dividing your annual salary by 2080 (52 weeks x 40 hours a week)).
Additionally, if your contract were specified to included a certain amount of overtime, eg for example the contract specifically stated ten hours per day and fifty hours per week, your employer could then ask you to work those hours without additional compensation, but anything over the specified hours would be 1.5x your hourly wage.
Further, Manitoba has the option of time in lieu, where instead of the company paying out your overtime wages, giving you equivalent time off, but remember, overtime is 1.5x regular wage, so the time off is also 1.5x. If I work 11 hours, that's 8 hours of regular time and 3 hours of overtime, I'm entitled to 4.5 hours of payed time off in lieu of wages.
This. This.
And man, @Zyre, that really blows. I work a job where I'm expected to be somewhat available 24/7 (and a good deal of my time is after business hours or on weekends, but my company certainly doesn't expect me to jump when they say "jump". I'd, honestly, be tempted to answer a call-in like that by telling them I'm blackout drunk*.
*Don't do this.
It really depends on the type of work. Something like this is, to my understanding, not always strange for say, a registered nurse. The specifics seem pretty out-there, but if this is a retail job (or service of any kind) I'd find it really fishy.
@Zyre, It may be a call to start discretely looking for another employer.
e: In the interest of full disclosure, there are times that rotation is bypassed, but those times are clearly laid out in the employee guidelines, and are things like "natural/man made disaster, causing an overflow of patients that can't be handled with regular staff".