On Call Time

ctcool · April 2001

I am a Sergeant for a small police department 25 officers. Since there is not a supervisor on at all time I will frequently get called for advice and persission to do things. These calls come all hours of the night. I requested to be paid and was told since the calls range from 5 top 10 minutes that the time was uncompensatable. I feel since I am called for my expertise and at all hours I should recieve something. I should also note that I am not a salaried employee and I am not an admiistrator. Do you have any related case law and is this legal that I do not get paid?

Theresa Gegen TX · April 2001

You should check out the DOL website and [url]www.dol.gov[/url] -- which gives a lot of information about federal laws which govern the payment of wages. Also, I would search for state agency that may have additional regulations about payment of wages (Texas has the Texas Workforce Commission, and I am guessing that most states have a similar agency).

Good Luck!

Coach · April 2001

Study I've done on the subject points at a case, Armour& Co. v. Wantock, 323 US 126, that indicates that on-call or waiting time being paid depends on whether the time is spent predominantly for the employer's benefit or for the employyee's. Another case, Skidmore v. Swift, 323 US 134, indicates that if the employee is "engaged to wait" the time should be compensated, but if the employee is simply "waiting to be engaged" payment for that time is not required.

From a personal point of view, one would think that a person in your position, being relied on to make command decisions after hours, could either have compensation for that activity built into the base hourly rate or an on-call bonus. This would seem a better option than trying to account for the occassional
/ unpredicatble 5 to 10 minute call and reasonably deal with the occassional impact on your otherwise private time. Sort of a compromise proposal - you and your employer just need to figure out what the reasonable value of that "time" is.

System · April 2001

In my opinion, as an hourly employee, your employer has to pay you for all hours worked. That includes ten-minute phone calls in the middle of the night. If, as a result of those phone calls, you work more than 40 hours in a given week, you should also be paid overtime.

It sounds like you would not be entitled to compensation for all hours you are "on call," (i.e., while you're sleeping but subject to receiving phone calls) but I don't think that was really your question.

Julie Athey
Senior Attorney Editor
M. Lee Smith Publishers
Author, "Defusing the Overtime Bomb: How to Comply with the FLSA"

pv25 · April 2001

Check out this link, it might help you:

[url]http://www.nolo.com/encyclopedia/articles/emp/oncall.html[/url]

System · April 2001

In my agency we had a similar situation for roll outs to psychiatric emergencies in the field until we centralized the roll out telephone calls from one location. But until then individual employees who were on "on call" made a determination on whether they were needed to roll out based upon a call from a community agency or private individual. Often that phone conversation took several minutes for the employee to decide whether it was appropriate for a roll out to occur. From what I came across, in my researching a similar question that many managers asked, I saw that courts had held that inconsequential or trivial time spent in preparation for performing the job was not considered work time. The minimal time involved that I came across, as I recall, was about 10 minutes. Since we rounded to the nearest quarter hour, I advised managers that if the phone conversation lasted under 7 minutes or so, and there was no roll out based upon the employee's determination in those 7 minutes, then it would not appear to be work time. Since the essential duty of the employee on the roll out was to handle a psychiatric emergency in the community, any conversation on the phone beyond getting the basic information about the roll-out would be a function of determining whether the roll-out was actually needed or not. It seems to me if your essential duties are to field inquiries and make decisions based upon those telephone calls, you should be paid since the time wouldn't be clearly inconsequential and would be an essential function.

System · April 2001

In the situation I described above, we had the employee son standby and paid a $1.00 an hour. They were free to do whatever they wanted during that time, but we expected them to respond to the phone call with in one half hour or do the roll out. If they rolled out, we guaranteed a minimum of 4 hours pay (if that resulted in FLSA overtime, than we paid that as well). MOst times they rolled out, but occassionally they were able to determine within a few minutes that an emergent roll out wasn't necessary. But, as I said, we eventually went to a central "clearinghouse" so that once the roll out worker got the call, it had already been determined that it was needed.

Theresa Gegen TX · April 2001

It seems to me like the inconsequential time that does not have to be paid is time that is connected to your work hours (for example, walking from a gate into your work area). A call in the middle of the night does not seem inconsequential to me.

Poncho · April 2001

If i'm not mistaken, the value of that time has already been determined by the FLSA. The employer only has to compensate the employee minimum wage for time spent on standby or on call situations.

owotm · July 2001

We pay on call hourly employees overtime to the nearest quarter hour for minutes spent on the phone. If I was in your place (as best I can feel what it's like in your shoes). I would unplug my phone at night and get caller ID for the day untill my boss made it right. I don't know all the ins and outs of being a police sargent. Maybe that's impossible.

On Call Time

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