Am I “On Call”??
We all know that anytime you are doing work for your employer you must be compensated. However, some employees don’t realize that they also need to be compensated if they are off duty but required to be available to respond to unforeseen issues. This may have come as a directive from a supervisor or manager that the employee be available by phone on the weekend or after business hours to handle situations or respond to matters. There are specific pay practices in the SLOCEA MOUs that address these times.
In the bargaining unit MOUs for the Big Unit: Public Services (01), Supervisory (05) and Clerical (13), and the Trades Unit (02), there is “Consultation Standby” pay wherein the assigned employee is paid $100 a month as additional compensation for occasionally being called or texted after scheduled work hours to provide work-related information or consultation. These employees are also paid their regular hourly rate of pay for time spent doing work while on Consultation Standby. Employees that surpass a threshold of calls/texts in a quarter must then be placed on Regular Standby Duty.
There are many classifications within the County and the Los Osos Community Services District (LOCSD) that are assigned to “Standby Duty” which requires employees to be on call due to the type of work they perform. A wide variety of County and LOCSD classifications are placed on standby and must be available and respond during hours outside of regular business hours to crisis, safety and emergency matters for the agency’s operations and the general public.
Employees are paid an hourly standby rate of pay for all hours assigned. Oftentimes this means from 5:00 p.m. until 8:00 a.m. the next day and may include the entire weekend. SLOCEA represented employees for the County received $3.00 an hour for standby pay with the exception of employees assigned to the Suspected Abuse Response Team (S.A.R.T.) that are paid $3.75 an hour. The LOCSD and SLOCEA recently negotiated a well-deserved bump in standby pay for its employees to $4.25 an hour. Employees on regular standby are paid overtime for doing work and responding to crisis, safety and emergency matters.
The MOUs for the Big Unit, Trades and the LOCSD state that employees on standby must:
Be ready to respond in a reasonable time to calls for his/her service;
Be readily available at all hours by telephone, or other communication devices, and;
Refrain from activities which might impair his/her assigned duties upon call.
If you find yourself “on call”, your employer is required to pay you the appropriate standby rate of pay as per the MOU. If you are not being paid while on standby, it’s time to call SLOCEA at 805-543-2021.
Theresa Schultz
Senior Labor Representative