On-Call (pager) Employment Agreement

AnaC

I am trying to come up with a reasonable agreement for an on-call employee. This employee is nonexempt, hourly, and regularly works 40 hours per week. In addition to her regular on-site 40 hours per week job, she is paid $10 per night to carry a pager provided by the agency (nonprofit). She is free to be anywhere at any time, because the only responsibility she has is to answer the page within a reasonable time by phone, and respond to the query by phone only, i.e. she does not have to physically go back to the facility, just make a phone call. Currently this agency has the employee fill out the amount of time she spent on her call backs, and then pays her time and a half for that time spent in answering the call (honor system!), if she's already put in 40 hours for the week. I looked up the DOL regs and according to their definition of hours worked, this arrangement seems to be in compliance.

Does anybody out there have any comments, suggestions based on your experience with such employee agreements? If anyone has some wording they currently use for their agreements, any input would be helpful and much appreciated.


Sincerely,
Ana

Hunter1

Sorry I can't help you ut with your wording, but you certainly seem to be on the right track as far as pay is concerned. Sounds like she is 'waiting to be engaged' as opposed to 'engaged to be waiting'. In my opinion, you wouldn't even have to pay her the $10, but it's probably good for her morale. As far as the honor system, you do have a method of tracking when she's called, don't you?

AnaC

Thanks for the response Hunter. Actually, I just found out that there is no tracking mechanism. The agency may purchase a cell phone to give to the employee and track the calls that way. We'll see what happens I guess.