Should You Be Paid For Being On Call? 735
theodp writes "Fortune's Dear Annie takes on the case of poor Dazed and Confused, an independent webmaster who's expected to be on call for his client at all hours of the day and night, but doesn't get paid for being on call, only for the 40 hours a week that he's in the office. Surprisingly, Annie throws cold water on the contractor's dreams of paid OT, citing these pearls of wisdom from an attorney who's apparently never had the 'privilege' of being a techie on call: 'Many companies see the on-call issue as analogous to a fire fighter's job. Most of the time, a fire fighter is off-duty but on call, hanging around the firehouse, cooking, sleeping, or whatever. What that person really gets paid for is the relatively small, but crucial, amount of time he spends walking into a burning building with an ax. A webmaster, likewise, has slow times and busy times.'" What on call policies are you used to working with and how should it work in an ideal world?
Well, then... (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's the way I see it. Mr. Lawyer, you want to pay for support 40 hours a week? I'll give you a cellphone number I'll answer 40 hours a week.
It is ridiculous to presume that offering the opportunity to interrupt one's life at any time, any place, with an overriding obligation to deal with your problems, has no value.
Oh, you want the 168 hour phone number? Well, that's gonna cost ya...
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Oh, you want the 168 hour phone number? Well, that's gonna cost ya...
... Your job.
Re:Well, then... (Score:5, Insightful)
If he is on the pay-roll he should probably join a union.
Re:Well, then... (Score:4, Insightful)
I haven't.
Re:Well, then... (Score:5, Interesting)
In Denmark, the IT union is one of the stronger ones.
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Re:Well, then... (Score:4, Informative)
For independent contractors or freelancers, a more comparable model might be the Freelancer's Union [freelancersunion.org] or an entertainment guild/mutual aid association like yours truly's union [editorsguild.com].
Both use collective bargaining to obtain health benefits and provide common resume writing/promotion/education/development services; the latter is a proper union has wage/working condition bargaining power by having a master agreement with all employers in a jurisdiction.
A union of freelancers is workable, and is the SOP in the film/television industry, when union benefits are made "portable" from job to job. In this case then the union's main job is to provide continuity of benefits, so I don't end up having six 401k's all over Los Angeles and paying COBRA one month out of every five.
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From my experience with unions, yea there are good reasons not to have an IT union.
Suppress wages, defend the inept, petty crap during "bargaining" years, strong arming members, and take money away for political purposes.
I was in a couple unions, two for IT in the public sector, I'm not a fan.
Re:Well, then... (Score:5, Informative)
As a swede (who is a union member) I'd like to give my opinion on this.
Suppress wages
Not really, they generally only demand guaranteed minimum raises (which are normally just a little over inflation) and minimum pay dependent on the field people work in. So they don't really suppress wages, they just make sure employers don't try to stick their employees with miserably low pay, and that employers are forced to give out raises that at least match inflation.
defend the inept
Most of the legal action I've seen from unions has been against employers who have insisted on 15 year-old 15" CRT monitors being ergonomically equivalent to new TFT monitors, that employees should come in to work ten minutes early without pay and similar silliness that affects "all" employees ("all" with quotation marks because obviously management has brand-spanking-new 24" TFT monitors because the old CRTs would somehow hamper their ability to work efficiently even though they're perfectly fine for everyone else) or individual cases where an employer wrongfully fired someone and the union offered legal assistance.
petty crap during "bargaining" years
Ah, but the employers are even worse in this regard, nothing like moving assets out of one daughter company with a lot of employees into another daughter company just so you can say the business division is doing poorly and can't afford respectable raises for the employees.
strong arming members
Never heard of this, sometimes individual union representatives can have some wonky demands on employers though, although the only times I've heard of this have involved employers who were notorious for always trying to "bend" labor laws so there was a clear power struggle between the employer and the union to begin with.
and take money away for political purposes.
There are definitely a few unions that do this, they're mostly the classic big "social democrat" unions like LO who have a historic connection to various political parties though.
I'm glad that I'm a union member, it has saved my ass a few times when employers have tried various bullshit.
/Mikael
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However, the union isn't protecting due process or preventing unethical firings. They simply cause so much hell that it takes hundreds of thousands of dollars and several years to fire a teacher. This isn't due process and this isn't fair, it's just nonsense
Re:Well, then... (Score:5, Interesting)
My experience, working with an education union in Oregon.
Suppress wages - I did IT, the school district was bound to make me an hourly worker by labor agreement with the Union, the Union that represented us was the union for school workers, janitors, secretaries, cafeteria workers. So yes, my wages were suppressed, I couldn't leave the union, couldn't get step pay raises because of education or certification, just by putting time in.
Defend the inept - Having the Union defend a coworker that threatened other coworkers (he talked about bringing a gun in if we didn't treat him better, to a school), tell me not to testify against another Union member who was accused of surfing child p0rn on an elementary school computer, oh it was grand.
Petty crap during "bargaining" years - Teachers union are "bargaining" so they all park in front of school district office, where a number of members of another union work, vandalize cars during work hours. I worked in administration for years and they never did anything like that.
Strong arming members - No secret ballots, blacklisting people who vote against what the union wants for a contract or strike vote, pressure to vote in State and Federal elections for the union's preferred candidate, etc. If you belong to a Teachers Union in the US, just try and vote against what the union wants, and they know who you are because you had to show your union card when you turn in your ballot.
Re:Well, then... (Score:4, Informative)
I call BS (or at the very least - you didn't know the whole story) - I have an IT friend (who is union) at D9 who collected evidence (in the form of proxy logs and security footage) in Southern Oregon where they fired a union janitor for just browsing regular porn on a teacher workstation. It was against the rules, they had evidence and they got rid of him - simple as that.
The union did nothing to stop management from taking that action. Now if they wanted to fire him for that reason, but had no evidence - I can see the union stepping in because yes - that would be a management abuse.
How many non union shops have you worked for where when layoffs came the managers, managers buddies, managers college friends (who they hired to collect direct deposit paychecks and nothing else) all kept their jobs, but the technicians and IT people all got cut? I've seen that too many times to count. Not saying this wouldn't happen in a union shop, but really - who's inept here?
My father and mother were both teachers in Oregon for all their working lives and have never dealt with any of the things you describe above.
Unions after all are what you make them - it sounds like you belonged to a group of criminals instead of a group of educators wanting to collectively bargain for better employment conditions.
Re:Well, then... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Honestly, it sounds to me like your problem wasn't unions in general but rather the teachers' union in the US.
While that might have been part of his experience, this matches a lot of what I've heard and not just from teacher's unions.
In short, the people who feel they have the most to lose get involved in union leadership. Also, if all of the union leadership are, say, Java programmers, then I bet they might negotiate harder for the benefits of Java programmers over networking engineers (which is pretty close to the "suppress wages" part of the teacher's union example).
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It may in fact be US unions - there are historical ties between the labor movement and organized crime over here which helps explain some of the strong arm and machine politics issues that our unions have. There is also a very strong adversarial relationship with management. It probably also has something to do with our level of income imbalance as well - unions have to be more forceful to get the same results. That level of adversarial behavior colors other relationships, leading to the aforementioned p
Re:Well, then... (Score:5, Insightful)
While the Constitution has its flaws, I cannot fathom how horrible a "new" Constitution developed by our current political "leaders" would be. I believe that it would be too horrible to behold.
The current political classes in DC need to be run out of town in total before we should even think of changing the constitution...
Re:Well, then... (Score:5, Informative)
"Sure, the constitution has its flaws, but it's better than what we have now"
This button made me smile, then frown, then cry.
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Suppress wages. No, we get a rise of between 3 and 4% EVERY year.
Yes, and either you are a below-average worker being over-paid, or an above-average worker being under-paid. Standardized pay scales and raises mean wage suppression for any above-average employee. Since you said "No", I assume you aren't.
Re:Well, then... (Score:4, Interesting)
I would LOVE to be an hourly paid worker, if they divided my current annual salary by 2080 (that's 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 52 weeks a year) and determined that to be my hourly wage. I reckon my gross income would about double, as hourly paid workers get overtime as a matter of law.
When I worked in Britain, I WAS hourly paid. We were on flex time and allowed to work no earlier than 8AM and no later than 7PM. Security checked the building at that time, and unless you had a note from your manager allowing you to work late you had to leave.
Also we had a 35 hour work week, and as hourly paid, we did receive overtime for any time worked beyond 35 hours, provided it was agreed in advance. However, we did have to clock in and out, and working at home was forbidden and not paid. If you were called at home it was an automatic 15 minutes of overtime, minimum.
Incidentally, all this was negotiated by our union. I was very pleased and happy with the union and gladly paid my dues.
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Who cares if they do this? Can't you just quit and get a job somewhere else that will pay well?
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Unions in the U.S. are much different than your unions in Sweden. For one thing, unions are big business here. Big, corrupt business. It's just one big business making deals with another big business (the employer) for those "minimum" wages that end up being "the most anyone in a union shop makes".
Their employees make a living off of union dues. Members are strong-armed to support political candidates and other laws and referendums that are union-friendly, even if they don't agree with them. "Support"
As an American, here's my union story... (Score:5, Informative)
And as an American in IT working at a unionized plant (I'm not in the union, but I write programs to do scheduling and such based on their ridiculously complicated seniority rules), let me give the other side of the story.
Yeah, this really happens several different ways. First and most obviously, they surpress the wages of the competent. There are people at our plant who are awesome workers who deserve more pay, and lazy people who should be fired and paid nothing at all. But firing is almost impossible, and the union insists everyone gets paid on the same scale. So the people who are as lazy as a pet coon make more than they are worth, and the competent people subsidize this by being paid less. Also, the minute workers unionize, management has to start playing heavy defense and trying as hard as they can to not give raises. Why? Because if they give raises and then have a bad year as a company (such as Chrysler and GM), the union won't take a pay cut, and they may go bankrupt. Every company who has watched the UAW over the years intuitively understands this, so they work hard at not giving an inch even in good times... thus depressing wages. My unionized plant is actually paid less than our non-unionized plants, so it really can happen that way.
Happens constantly. My father in law (a union member) quit his job as a union steward because he was sick of defending people who were in the wrong. At my plant it's the same way. Most grievances are filed by inept workers with a sense of entitlement. Likewise, most of the times management tries to fire inept workers, they can't, because the union defends them tooth and nail. We busted one guy repeatedly for spending hours looking at porn at work, and he kept getting defended. The only way we got him out was by essentially plea-bargaining him: you agree to resign, and we won't make public what you did, so your family won't find out. Otherwise, we couldn't have gotten rid of him, because the contract says you can only be fired if you commit the same offense twice in a six month period, and he was doing it outside the six month window (or at least that's how often we were catching him).
Happens all the time during bargaining, although to be fair both sides are petty. In my plant, both the union and the management hated a certain seniority rule, but neither wanted to negotiate or change it because "once it's gone we might not be able to get the rule back if we ever want it in the future." So you keep it (and fight over it) even though both sides agree it's stupid.
This has never been more true than under the current US administration. The unions are pushing for two new rules. The first is card check, which allows unions to organize based on a check of who is carrying cards, rather than having a formal vote in which both union and management make their case, and then the members vote. In fact, you don't even have to have a majority to unionize under this! And look at the "employee free choice act" rule change: it takes away the right to a secret ballot and makes people vote publicly for and against the union. That way everyone knows who didn't vote for the union, and coercion can take place. Both of these rules are strong arm tactics that do not benefit employees, and taking away a secret ballot or organizing without a vote or even a majority are all totally un-American.
Every union I know of takes dues from its members and spends them to fund the Democratic party. Big Labor is pretty much a wholly owned subsidiary of the Democratic party, and everyone knows it. My father in law sees his dues spent to elect Democrats every year, even though he votes Republican. But that's how unions operate... just like some companies (cough GE cough) try to get in bed with government and carve out monopolies and policies in their favor, Big Labor does the same. They are all about increasing their size, financial and power bases.
Re:Well, then... (Score:4, Interesting)
You hear that? That loud sucking sound? It's the sound of an IT union driving the last of our jobs overseas at warp speed.
Re:Well, then... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Well, then... (Score:5, Informative)
Read history. Unions occurred when the oligarchs had all the power and the workers (often as young as 8) were little better than slaves working 7/16 with no benefits. Fast forward to the 90s. IT talent is scarce so they can't get away with this. Fast forward to about 20 seconds past the dot com crash. Threatened with wage arbitrage (i.e. outsourcing), IT personnel get hooked to pagers 24/7. Collar and leash optional.
Unions work in other countries like Sweden and Japan. Unfounded claims to the contrary, we're nobody special and they can work here too.
Is there abuse in unions? You bet. Is there abuse without unions? You bet.
Bottom line? If you don't push back, you get pushed to the wall, and asked to bend over.
Re:Well, then... (Score:4, Informative)
What have you done for me lately? (Score:3, Informative)
That's great. I'm not saying that unions haven't done good things for the labor force in the US. They have. Muchas gracias.
HOWEVER, a great deal of the protections that organized labor used to provide are now provided BY LAW. This makes the labor unions somewhat superfluous.
Also, in many unions, cronyism is rampant. As has been mentioned elsewhere. You fall afoul of the crony brigade, with something as simple as someone not liking you, and you are FUCKED.
My grandfather was a nice, amiable guy. Good u
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Certainly, the capitalists must have built some sort of device that forced perfectly happy and well fed rural laborers and their well educated children to leave their rural squalor without offering a demonstrably better life, including such aspects as not forcing their children into prostitution or starvation. Because, you know, people can
Re:Well, then... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well...
Having played both sides of this issue, let me throw some thoughts out to the wolves (so to speak):
1. If he is asking slashdot on how to handle this, I doubt he is in a position to lose any customers.
2. If the website is so problematic that he needs to be on call, then maybe he should make an effort to improve the reliability.
3. I've had a few customers who used to call after hours for issues not related to the work I was doing. If the problem was small and can be done over the phone (or remotely) I usually helped them out for free. If the problem looked like it was going to take some time to fix or required me to drive to their location, I charged. If the problem could not wait until regular business hours, I charged accordingly. The trick was that I did enough gratis work for them, that they didn't flinch when I required payment for the particularly difficult problems...
4. As the economy worsens, the number of competitors for your clients will increase. It's easier to work a little harder to keep a client, then it is to replace one.
5. Keep in mind, that some advice given here on Slashdot are from those who wouldn't mind taking your client.
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I'm guessing you didn't RTFA.
He's classified as a contractor, but the odds are he'd legally be considered an employee were the company audited for payroll taxes. Could even run into labor law co-employment issues. Basically the company is doing exactly what those laws aim to prevent - getting full-time services from an employee without paying for that employee's benefits.
More to the point, this company is his only customer; he reports in the office 40 hours a week, just like an employee, and he gets paid
Re:Well, then... (Score:5, Informative)
No need for a union. Simply:
1) get written confirmation from your boss you are not elligible for overtime and on-call pay. Show him a copy of the FLSA related to on-call work and have them explain why they fee it does not apply to your position.
2) work as long as you feel you'de like to for that firm.
3) at some point later, present a copy of the FLSA 29 CFR 17 defining on-call pay requirements, having this notorized by a lawyer is nice too. Even an anonymous call to the labor board in your state may also work so you can remain anonymous and reap the benefits without job loss.
4) take large settlement check for all logged time (at time and a half at least, plus additional compensation as best as you can negotiate).
4a) if company offers your continued employment, great, if not, you have a real nice paycheck, plus back pay
4b) if check not offered, sue, you'll be due at least 3 times the back pay at time and a half, plus all your legal fees. It's a cut and dry case, you'll be compensated additionally for time lost, and likely will never appear in court.
Here's the conditions outlined in the FLSA regarding who should be paid for on-call waiting time (on call actual time on a call helping someone is assumed you'll be paid for, this is the "sitting around" time you should also be paid for...):
--Geography. How far can an on-call worker stray from the jobsite? The more restricted he or she is, the more likely it is that on-call time is compensable. Before cell phones and pagers, on-call people often had to be at home, by the phone. Now they can be anywhere, so the issue is less clear. That often brings it down to a matter of
--Response Time. How long a time do you allow for on-call people to respond? That frequently spells how far away they can be. If you demand the person be on-site in 10 minutes, says Jorgensen, the time is likely to be compensable. If it’s 60 minutes, he believes the opposite is true.
--Call Frequency. How often is the person actually called? In one court case, Jorgensen reports, an employee called three to five times a day was ruled to be working and had to be paid. In another case, one called six times in a year was not deemed so.
--Uniqueness. A fourth factor relates to how many of your workers can do the needed work. If there’s a pool of employees available, and employees can trade off the on-call responsibility, there’s less evidence that any one of them is restricted personally.
--Alcohol restrictions. If the company requires you to remain sober during on-call time, likely you qualify for pay during the entire time.
Other things that may factor in regionally or at the state level:
- additional compensation for interrupted meals, including at the least pay for the intire time of the meal plus the interruption, and potentially fair compensation for the cost of the meal.
- minimum 5 hours uninterupted rest clause. Get woken up at 3AM after going to sleep at 11PM. Have to be at work at 8AM next day, so you get up at 5:30. You did not get 5 hours uninterupted, so you must be paid the ENTIRE 8 HOURS OF SLEEP as if you were awake/
- no alternate compensation: can't be compensated with comp time, only payroll. In states where comp-time is approved comensation for on-call work, that must be at 150% the comp rate (equiv of overtime compensation pay). Further, an employer in most states can not make you leave early because you worked late the night before, nor cut your hours to below your average work week in order to avoid overtime.
- OSHA and other FLSA regulations on max time allowable at work in a 24 hour period (varies by job title as well, for instance emergency worker, driver, etc).
Re:Well, then... (Score:5, Insightful)
Right, I'm sure Mr Lawyer wouldn't mind being on retainer for free either. We'll call you when we need you and pay you on the go.
Firefighters get benefits though in that they are provided food and shelter at no cost and can practically live at the firehouse, albeit not something everyone would love to do :P
I think if you expect someone to be at your every beck-and-call, then you need to pay them. At least give them some reason to care.
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Unless you guys run your fire houses a LOT differently than ours, firefighters get paid while their on duty (including lounging around the fire house). Nobody starts a stop watch when they hit the threshold of the burning house and then stops it when they exit.
Re:Well, then... (Score:4, Informative)
My experience with lawyers has been that they expect a big fat retainer up front, and then they want to be paid more if they go beyond the scope of the initial retainer. Lawyers don't work on open ended commitments akin to keeping a website up and running in perpetuity. If we weren't talking about a lawyer here, I would say that I don't believe the gall of that woman. But since she is a lawyer, I expect her to be hypocritical and two-faced.
Lawyers nickel and dime clients to death. They charge for photocopies. They charge for drive time to and from court. They expense every single little thing that they can. For a lawyer to tell a webmaster that he is in the wrong for expecting some compensation for time spent after hours working on a website is ridiculous. Lawyers won't even talk to most people about legal matters unless they are getting paid to do it.
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And Mr. Lawyer bills accordingly.
I don't quite see the problem here. Most employers that make employees "independent contractors" also make them turn in an invoice to get paid on, so they have a quasi-legitimate paper trail for the feds.
Bill everything. Just like Mr. Lawyer does, if you get an after hours call, it gets billed at after-hours rates.
Work is billed in minimum blocks. Some people do 15 minutes. Some do 1 hour. Someone else mentione
I am married (Score:2)
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Agree on the workplace culture here. I'm salaried with no overtime pay, but there is not much overtime, maybe 1-3 hours a week max, and on more "slack" weeks I can also work less, I just have to make about the hours that are in my contract each year.
If there is a *real emergency* I get called, too, but in those cases I basically prefer to know when something is seriously broken right away, instead of having to pick up the pieces after someone else tried to "fix it".
But the flexibility has to be mutual. I do
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The last time I worked on call, I got an hour of overtime per weekday, and two hours on the weekend just for being on-call....and I was paid over time if I got paged and had to go in and do some work...but that is working in a Country that has real labour laws, Canada. Before that, I worked in Charlotte, NC, and if I didn't do on-call for free, I would have been let go from my job. A friend of mine working for another company there sometimes put in as much as 60 hours of over time, answering on-call problem
Re:Well, then... (Score:4, Insightful)
"Independent Contractor". No such thing as a base salary.
The trouble ensued when he was about to be laid off and his employer decided (instead of letting him go) to offer him a position as an independent contractor, paid at a rate of 40 hours a week in the office. He didn't realize that the position included being on call 24/7 with no compensation, even though his old salaried position had the same on-call responsibilities, and he signed up to do "the exact same job as before, only paid by the hour instead of on salary, with no benefits."
The difficulty lies in the difference between an employer and a customer. As an independent contractor, his customer is not bound by the same labor laws as they were when he was an actual employee of theirs.
His former employer is now his customer. The customer doesn't "have" to pay him jack for anything. They "have" to pay him what the contract between the two of them states. And in the absence of a written contract, if the conversation never came up about overtime or even straight-time pay for being on call or even handling calls, the customer is not liable for anything. They are paying for office time at 40 hours and he's giving them any additional time out of the office as part of the contract.
His best bet, if he really wants to be paid for on-call, is to go and ask for the terms of his contract to be clarified/changed, at which point his customer will either negotiate with him to find an equitable arrangement, or they can also terminate his contract if they so choose.
The question is not whether he's entitled to overtime for oncall duties. He's not. Sorry. He's offering a service at a set price and if he wants to change that he needs to work it out with his customer.
The real question is whether it's worth the risk to him to renegotiate with his only customer in this sucky economy, because his customer might decide he's not the best vendor after all.
If his skills are truly unique, he can probably work something out. If he's just monitoring a web server and doing things that can be done remotely, his customer might decide that it's cheaper to move the website into a monitored hosting provider.
Re:Well, then... (Score:5, Interesting)
The trouble ensued when he was about to be laid off and his employer decided (instead of letting him go) to offer him a position as an independent contractor, paid at a rate of 40 hours a week in the office.
If that's really what happened, he's got more problems than this on-call business. As described, that is what the IRS calls 'conversion' and they will reclassify him back as an employee, fine the crap out the employer and keep the self-employment taxes he's been paying as a contractor (double-dip).
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Yes, I wanted to make sure somebody said what you said. This actually happened to me, in a less nefarious way: I was given a job structured as an IC instead of a regular employee; but sometime later somehow the powers that be smelled the situation and decided it stunk. The whole issue hinged on "do you offer your services to the public", which I didn't, and that got the employer in trouble. They changed me into a real employee lickity split.
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There still are minimum wage laws, and in the case of Information Technology workers, you still have to be paid for over time explicitly by law unless you are making over a minimum threshold (of about $70k per year) as set by the US DOL. If you can document that you are not making minimum wage (a very real possibility as I did being a stupid college student back in the day working for some private companies) you can simply demand at least minimum wage and time-and-a-half for over 40 hours. That is the law
Re:Well, then... (Score:5, Informative)
An independent contractor who has only 1 customer is by law considered an employee. If you're provided a desk, equipment of any kind, security access as an employee is (doesn't have to sign in, etc), is issued commands and job tasks by management, averages over 36 hours per week over a 3 month period or longer, has a dedicated manager, is expected to show up and work regular hours, etc, then the contractor is simply an employee who chooses to not accept HR to process their tax paperwork. In fact, in many states, it is ILLEGAL to have an "independent contractor" not be on the books if at any time their contract is open ended or not related to a specific task with a defined completion date. If he's there ofr a "contract job" where the job ends given a sety of conditions, and where he's the only one doing the work (not part of a team of other full time contractors), then he may very well be a contractor, but then he's got the power to negotiate or walk away as well, and should have a business contract with them, and not have filled out an employment application...
I had an employer try to pull this BS in CT. He thought it would be a great idea to fire us all, hire us back at a 10% pay raise, but save all the benefits, vacation, Social security and HR costs, etc. he saved about $300/week per each of us, and we got $50-100 more... Come tax time, we found out the hard way that just because an employer doesn't pay your matching SS costs and medicare, that does NOT mean it does not have to get paid... i had a $4K tax debt to deal with under this arrangement.
We spoke to a lawyer, and the state department of labor, and the guy got fined big time, and we each got the back pay X3, our tax debt reassigned to his firm, and 10% of what they took out of his ass for reporting him. During the process, he terminated us all instantly, so we also got compensation for unlawful termination and loss of work pay (plus unemployment on top). They also found out he'd been doing this for YEARS in cycles, and got him for a few hundred grand in unpaid taxes, and last I heard he was still serving a 9 year prison sentence for tax evasion (he tried to move all the money and the house to relative's accounts so they could not put leans on it when he refused to pay up). They took everything he had, business home and cars.
Contractors by definition can not be on salary. If you;re buddy is only paid 40 hours as a contractor, he needs to send them a bill and threaten to send a copy to the labor board and the attorney general of the state. Have him tell them he wants time and a half back pay, plus time and a half vacation compensation, plus $300 per payroll period in leiu of stiffer fines from the government, and give them a copy of the FLSA sections refering to the definitions of contractor and employee.
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Agreed. He actually doesn't "have" to provide it.
He's an independent contractor. He doesn't have an employer, he has a customer. He doesn't have to do anything he's not paid for. He doesn't have to do anything he doesn't feel like doing. On the other hand, his customer doesn't have to pay him for anything not in the contract, and they don't have to keep him as a vendor.
I get the pretty distinct impression that he agreed to a an hourly paycheck based on doing the exact same job he did before, which job
An artifact of the 90s (Score:2, Informative)
Lots of companies used to give pay or comp time in exchange for on call duty, back in the days when the It staff was considered an asset rather than an expense. Those days are over.
salary sucks (Score:2, Interesting)
Of course you should be paid (Score:5, Informative)
You're basically hooked to a pager, which means you need to be near a phone, and usually near a computer with internet connectivity.
I don't work in operations, but everyone in decent places I've worked at did get paid around 3hours of salary per 24hours of wearing the pager. Then it was a minimum of 1 hour per "call" (more like issue, as it could involve multiple calls) except for the first one of the day which was included in the 3hours.
That meant that in a typical week you'd get paid for (24*7)-40 hours of "pager duty", which amounted to 16 hours of salary, so 2 days extra. That's pretty good, assuming you're on a decent rotation and don't have to be THE guy doing it every single week.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Of course you should be paid (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You're basically hooked to a pager, which means you need to be near a phone, and usually near a computer with internet connectivity.
And you need to be sober. Depending on what it is you like to do with your free time, the possibility of having to work at any moment might severely impair your ability to properly enjoy your free time. That has value.
Re:Of course you should be paid (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Of course you should be paid (Score:5, Funny)
I drink when I'm *at* work, I'm certainly not changing that when I'm on-call!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
i remember this becoming an issue for me - i was on vacation - got an e-mail on my phone - had been drinking considerably and was in the car with the wife driving us back to the hotel.
the next week when i was back in the office there was a print out of the e-mail i sent with a huge ? on it on my desk.. apparently my response was so bad the thought my e-mail got "corrupted"
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
My company has a pretty simple setup. On Call Primary - $300/wk, On Call Secondary - $150/wk. Flat fee.
1. If you are forced to work more then 24 hours straight the secondary takes over for 12 hours.
2. If you have work more then an additional 40 hours per week, you get equal 'comp. time' (Ext Paid Vacation time)
3. If you were not on call and have to fill in for a last min change/emergency you get whatever time in 'comp. time'
4. During Scheduled Maintenance (min 1 week advanced warning) the primary and seco
Not bloody likely! (Score:2)
There seems to be some confusion here... (Score:5, Insightful)
However, it doesn't really much matter exactly how that extra money is delivered. It could be that "The job description of 'Job A' includes being on call, which is why people who do it earn a hefty salary" or it could be "'Job B' is 9 to 5; and time on call is X dollars/hour outside of that". That seems to be the point of confusion.
Re:There seems to be some confusion here... (Score:5, Insightful)
However, it doesn't really much matter exactly how that extra money is delivered. It could be that "The job description of 'Job A' includes being on call, which is why people who do it earn a hefty salary" or it could be "'Job B' is 9 to 5; and time on call is X dollars/hour outside of that". That seems to be the point of confusion.
Exactly. The first question here should be, are we talking about a salaried position or an hourly wage? If it's a salaried position, then the salary should just be higher for taking on a job with the increased responsibility of being on call. "Being on call" should be part of the job description, and part of the negotiation for salary at hiring. If it wasn't and they ask you to be on call, then I think it's generally reasonable to say, "That wasn't part of my job description. If you want me to be on call, then I want a pay bump to go along with it."
If it's an hourly wage, then again it needs to be negotiated. If it were me, I'd probably want a certain rate for working the normal 40 hour week, a different rate for being on call, and a third (relatively high) rate for work done outside of normal hours, while on call. If you want me to make an effort to ensure that I can be reached 24/7, I expect some kind of compensation. If you expect me to actually come in at 2am and work, then I expect to get paid more for that time than I get paid during the normal weekday.
Of course, negotiating terms of employment can always be tricky. If you really like your job and don't mind being on call for the amount you're paid, then you might not want to push it. If you play hardball, it's possible they'll just let you go.
Dear Mister Lawyer.... STFU... Thanks. (Score:2, Insightful)
As someone who is a web developer/webmaster web-whatever-you-want-to-call-it. At most of my jobs I spend most of my 40 hours a week busy. Doing work. When I have done systems administration, it's been the same thing. I am 90% busy those 40 hours per week. There are VERY little slow periods, unlike a Fire fighter (not to dis fire fighters) who spend most of their day waiting to be called to work. If I work 40hrs during the week, and then get called in 3-4 nights because something is acting up, in a wa
Personally I believe it depends upon if you're... (Score:2)
...salaried or not.
If you are salaried, you accepted a position for fixed pay, fixed pay for all the responsibilities of that position (usually.) If you're hourly, you should be paid for the time you're in action during your on call period. If being 'on call' is seriously intrusive to your everyday life then you should discuss, before accepting the position, whether or not that results in some form of recompense (monetary or otherwise.)
Presuming he/she is salaried, you can't complain about it after accept
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It holds true even if you're simply given the added responsibility without a change of position. Don't like your position at your company? Renegotiate or leave. You're not entitled to some sort of 'automatic pay' increase just for being on call.
I'm the CTO of a small software company. My board can, and often does, call me at all hours of the day and night. I find myself spending quite a few Sundays or Saturday nights flying out early to meet with the board prior to important 3rd party meetings, I don't
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm the CTO of a small software company. My board can, and often does, call me at all hours of the day and night. I find myself spending quite a few Sundays or Saturday nights flying out early to meet with the board prior to important 3rd party meetings, I don't get paid extra for this, but I certainly considered this possibility before accepting the position and I made sure that my compensation package reflected these 'hardships.'
Is your income/lifestyle comparable to the average IT guy? Just curious. Back in my 'office drone' days one I got into a shouty match with one of my coworkers. One of the higher-ups had a private chat with me and I explained that the other person started yelling and that I wasn't going to tolerate that crap. So the higher-up told me this story about how he worked at a big company you've heard of and how their semi-famous CEO would stand an inch or two from your face and yell at you at full volume. This
Re:Personally I believe it depends upon if you're. (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, I hate to disabuse any fantasies out there but I'm the CTO of a *small* software company ;). I get paid well, but not in any way comparable to a board level position at a large (or even mid sized) company. I get to spend time in the board room. I get to be the software architect. I get to be the principal engineer. Apparently this job is about lots of 'opportunity' - LOL.
I wasn't always the CTO of a company, and I have been in the 'on call' support position when a very large company bought a smaller company I was the architect for. These responsibilities were added w/o any recompense. It was only for a transitional 1 year period though. I have been on call support at other times as well (especially early on in my career) and it was something I expected in moderate doses.
The issue the contractor in the article appears to have is that he/she negotiated a contract that stipulated they were paid for in office work but that they would not be paid for out of office work.
BTW, I certainly wouldn't put up with someone yelling at me at work, or a CEO doing it to me in public (my current CEO and I have heated discussions (we don't shout though) but we always manage to differentiate our work relationship from our personal relationship.) I doubt I'd put up with a CEO screaming at me in private either unless I felt I deserved it for some reason (i.e. login: root password: *** cd / rm -rf)
Where I work... (Score:2)
NOT GONNA DO IT! (Score:5, Insightful)
I tried this once, but I hated being on a leash so much that I quickly found another job. It just wasn't worth my sanity.
Re:NOT GONNA DO IT! (Score:5, Insightful)
One the items often missed here is the exempt employees are supposed to be able to exercise judgment. It's a vague concept in many circumstances. However, if you are able to exercise judgment, you MUST be able to use the following word:
NO.
Do some companies make it hard to say no? Absolutely. Been there done that. But that is what you must do. If you are a worker bee that just takes instructions from management... you are not a professional and you should be paid overtimes.
It's amazing to me the number of people who never even TRY to say no. I don't know how I'd act if my manager actually threatened to fire me for saying no. It's never happened. Granted, I am sure it has cost me in terms of promotions, bonuses... Perfectly fair if you ask me. Someone else is willing to work harder than me... they deserve it.
I'm a pretty reasonable person. I'll put in some extra hours if a deadline is coming up. I'll do a late night call once in a while if there's an emergency. If I start to see a pattern... emergencies happening weekly... then it ain't an emergency and management had better start budgeting for that.
And yes, we should all be grateful to have a job in this time. But never forget this is not a one way street. No employer is going to value you unless you value yourself.
You know the code/equipment; you know the domain; you know the processes; you are known to do good work. You're worth something. If you leave, the company has to go find a replacement, train them, deadlines pushed back because a new person is coming in... and there's uncertainty if it works out... Chances are the company is understaffed as is... and losing you would just make things even more unmanageable. In short, value yourself. Don't overvalue yourself... anyone can be replaced :P
A contractor? (Score:4, Insightful)
You want the opportunity to use my services at your convenience? Pay me a retainer equal to X hours a month. I work any more than X, you pay me an hourly rate. I work less than X, you still owe me for those hours.
hospital model... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, the firefighter mentioned is flawed - he is *at work* waiting for a call to come in. On call is not at work, but available should the shit hit the fan.
The hospitals I worked in, the staff that were on call (CAT scan techs, nuke med techs, OR nurses, recovery room nurses, dialysis folks) were paid $1 or $2 per hour just for carrying the beeper. Should they get called in, they were guaranteed 2 hours of pay, but they had to stay waiting for something to do for that whole time (a CT tech could come in and scan someone in 10 min - but they then had to hang out and wait for the extra hour and 50 minutes). This pay was at regular pay rates/levels, so night shift differential or holiday differential kicked in, as would over time if their total for the pay week was over 40 hours.
So... followign this, our poor over worked web master would be paid say $1/hr for totin his beeper or whatever. If he gets called, he comes in and fixes the issue, gets a minimum of 2 hours of work at his hourly rate, and probably gets over time. Sounds good. In reality, he's probably a salaried employee, so over time is out the window, and if he's lucky he may be allowed to leave 15 minutes early on Friday to make up for it.
Firefighting (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Firefighting (Score:5, Informative)
My brother is a firefighter, works 24 on, 72 off. He is at the station the entire time he is "on call", and never, ever gets called when off duty, unless someone needs to trade shifts. If he has training to do, it is either done during his shift (with obvious breaks for fires) or he gets paid additional to come in during his off time (or gets a 24 hour shift waived as payment, basically trading time)
Is the lawyer thinking of Volunteer firefighters? they usually work their real jobs during the day, and when the call comes, go to work as a firefighter. Many Volunteer departments in rural areas don't pay the firefighters, but do re-imburse them a token amount for mileage when they drive to the scene.
I 3 My Job (Score:2)
My company has a great on-call system. You're on call 1 out of 8 weeks, and get paid $50 a day to carry the pager, which really means "forward SMS monitoring messages to your cellphone." It's also nice because we run Linux so our systems rarely have issues. It's basically like getting an extra $350 every other month for nothing.
Paid call (Score:3, Informative)
My wife is an OR (operating room) nurse who is paid to be on call, which I would consider to be roughly analogous to this topic. However, there are a couple of major differences:
1. She has to go to a specific location (the hospital) when called in. It's not like she can do her job from home.
2. She's paid hourly.
3. Usually if she gets called in, someone is dying. I would rarely, if ever, classify an IT emergency anywhere near as important as that.
Re:Paid call (Score:4, Insightful)
Well... (Score:2)
Meaning if you go from 40hrs to 40hrs + "We can call if we need you" you should then therefore
No way. (Score:2)
Expected on call 24 x 7 without being paid for it? I don't think so. I value my free time too much for that. How can you ever go fishing, hunting, camping, or be at a movie if you're expected to answer the phone?
The firefighter is not really paid for that small but crucial amount of time that they are in action. They are paid for the time that they're hanging around the station house unable to do anything BUT respond to fires.
Annie has this one wrong, very wrong
The point is that your time is not your own (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The reason you are confused is because you have fallen prey to companies misuse of the term salary. They would like you to think that salary means "x dollars for 40 hours a week and we don't pay you for overtime". If you are docked pay for not showing up, you are
Firefighter Analogy is flawed. (Score:4, Informative)
'Many companies see the on-call issue as analogous to a fire fighter's job. Most of the time, a fire fighter is off-duty but on call, hanging around the firehouse, cooking, sleeping, or whatever. What that person really gets paid for is the relatively small, but crucial, amount of time he spends walking into a burning building with an ax.
This is flawed, as in many fire departments or houses there are multiple crews. You've got 3 days 'in the house' then 3 days 'at home' followed by '4 days in the house' then 4 days 'at home.' When you're in the house, you're responsible for any and all calls that come in. So firefighters get paid for the time they are in the house. Just like most people are paid for the time they are in the office, but aren't paid for Saturdays and Sundays.
If he wants to correct the analogy, he should say that firefighters who are in the 'at home' phase, get called in, but don't get paid for it. They do get paid for it, just like Police Officers that work overtime or off-shift.
He's not really "on call" (Score:5, Informative)
As a independent contractor he gets to choose if he wants to work or not. If he wants to go out of town then go for it, but if they call and you're not available they're going to get someone else. You're not "on call", they just let you know "hey we have some work here if you want it, if not no problem".
Being an independant contracotr for a business just means you are someone they know with a particular skill and they will let you know when they need your expertise in the future. It's the job equivalent of "fuck buddy".
If he got paid for being "on call" as a independent contractor then we'd all have to pay plumbers, lawn mowing guy, electrician, mechanics, and all the other "use you when I need you" people in our lives for being "on call".
Being on call, is being at work. (Score:3, Informative)
If I'm at work I can't drink, can't go out of state, can't do anything outside of what my boss tells me I can do (basically).
If I'm no longer on the clock, I can do whatever I want (basically).
If I'm asked to be on call, I have to mold my "not on the clock" time to whatever my boss requires. I can't go out of state. I can't go to an amusement park with my kids. I can't go to a movie. Well, not unless I don't mind up and leaving to go home and sign on the laptop.
If your boss expects you to do x or y while you're not on the clock, you _are_ on the clock and deserve pay for it. The only time I allow my boss to dictate what I can and can't do is when he's paying me to allow him to boss me around.
Here is where the lawyer's analogy fails. (Score:4, Insightful)
Firefighters aren't just "hanging around the firehouse" when they're not putting out fires. They spend that time maintaining equipment, training, performing building inspections, and a lot of other duties. I'm sure municipal policies vary, but I'm certain that many firefighters work regular shifts, and when an emergency call extends beyond their regular shift they are paid overtime.
Wrong! (Score:5, Informative)
100 percent of wrong. Firefighters are not off-duty when they are on-call. They are on-duty. When they go off-duty, they are no longer on call. Firefighters are typically on-duty for a 24-hour shift for two or three days a week. On their off days, they are not on call. Thus, most of the time, a firefighter is NOT on call.
nonsense and bullshit (Score:3, Insightful)
On-call duty is to be paid, end of story. Anyone trying to sell you otherwise is trying to save money at your expense.
That said, of course it isn't paid at the same rate as a regular work hour. After all, you can spend it dozing, surfing the web for porn, fighting with your loved one or going shopping.
The alternative for the company to having someone on call is to have someone there, on the clock. Obviously, that's a lot more expensive. Since they're a company and trying to make a profit, they'll try to get things as cheaply as possible, and free if at all possible. That doesn't mean you have to give it to them for free. Next they'll be asking for free overtime, and then if you'd mind not being paid at all.
Really, I'm not being sarcastic. They are essentially asking you to work for nothing. It's not much work (carrying a cell phone and picking it up if it rings), but it's work.
And don't let them fool you with examples of other jobs. There are some jobs where being on call is so standard that it's figured into the regular salary. That doesn't mean it's free, it's just not explicitly listed on the paycheck. And of course firemen get paid for the time they're waiting for an emergency. After all, that's why we have professional firefighters - to have someone ready to come at a moments notice. And if you check their contracts, they certainly don't say "a work week consists of 3,5 hours inside burning buildings and 1,5 hours rescuing lost cats", but much more likely something like "a work week consists of 40 hours".
Law varies from state to state (Score:3, Insightful)
http://www.gotovertime.com/facts.html#myth_comp [gotovertime.com]
I got paid (Score:3, Interesting)
A friend of mine had 100% extra on his boss webservers, but that was because he had built it from scratch and was probably the only one who could fix any problems in the time his boss wanted it to be fixed.
In my opinion, this Annie should be paid atleast 50% her normal salary when she is on call. This is something which should be in the contract with her employer. If the website is so important so she can't fix it in the morning, then it means it's also important enough to pay for on call service.
Do I have to be sober? (Score:3, Insightful)
At my last job we didn't have an on call schedule but we were generally expected to be accessible to our customers if Something Bad happened. One Friday night, around 7pm, my colleague got one of those calls. He listened to the customer explain the problem, and then proceeded to tell him that he would be best served by calling the manufacturer's support line as he had been drinking for several hours and would probably just make things worse in his current condition. No one could really fault him; he did the right thing by the customer.
Absolutely (Score:4, Interesting)
Impairment Compensation (Score:4, Interesting)
My policy always was, my pager compensation was proportional to the potential impairment of my own agenda.
What I mean is, if you expect me to reply to you within a certain time frame, then I have to be near a phone or within cell coverage. This restricts where I can go. If you expect me to connect in remotely, I have to be near internet connectivity, and most of the time be carrying my laptop with me. This further restricts where I can go, and what I can do when I go there. If you want me to be on site within a certain time frame, that even further restricts where I can go.
If I can watch TV, go to the movies, or out for dinner and still be on call, that's not going to cost you as much as if I have to be within 30 minutes of being on-site from the moment you call me.
Historically, I have been lucky. One employer paid us $500/week to carry the pager with a 90-minute call-back SLA (and then hilariously lost the pager number and refused to admit it, so was unable to call us for 8 months). One customer was quoted something stupid like $5K/week for 7x24, 60-minute on-site (plus hourly when we got there). Any call time was billed back to the client, and we (theoretically) got time-for-time in exchange for that. My current employer has a pager our customers to call, but since it is 7x24 it is optional to be in the rotation and for various reasons I've opted out. In addition to receiving money for your week on the pager here, time is tracked very strictly and we get time-for-time for any pager-call time served.
Lawyer's retainer? (Score:3, Insightful)
And does the lawyer offering this advice accept a retainer fee from his clients so that he can be on call for them?
24x7 support is costly in any business. The firefighter is not an apt analogy... Is he expected to work an 8 hour day and THEN be on call for fires?
And is he serious when he thinks a firefighter is paid for only the small amount of time he is out firefighting? If that were the case, I expect we would see a lot of financially insolvent firefighters-turned-pyromaniac in order to put their kids through college.
Cut and Dry here (Score:5, Informative)
I've worked On-Call shifts with a number of companies before.
Here's the deal:
The FLSA [Fair Labor Standards Act] regulations provide that "[a]n employee who is required to remain on call on the employer's premises or so close thereto that he cannot use the time effectively for his own purposes" is considered to be "working." 29 C.F.R. [section] 785.17
It is against the law for a on-call person to be paid salary. They are non-exempt employees by definition. Any time spent fulfilling required job duties outside of the office must be compensated. Overtime pay scales may or may not apply by job description.
Since a home system, paid for at least in part by an employer, including compensated phone/internet bills and job requirements to maintain a home computer for work purposes (or a provided corporate computer for use at home, including rotated on-call hardware shared by several people) is an extension of the office and the duties of the job, that home system is essentially ruled by the courts to BE the office when on-call. Anytime an employer requires an on-call person to remain in their home, or in proximity to a computer system and to carry and answer a phone routed by the company at specific hours, then that person, under the FLSA, is in fact WORKING. The rate they're paid for that time spent "waiting" for a call may be billed at varying rates, but generally not less than 50% of regular pay, and any time actually on a call would be bileld at the standard rate for that employee (or overtime rate if it applies). Many companies pay a base "convenience" wage to people who are on call but take no calls during that time.
The Supreme Court, in previous rulings, has also concurred. If you are bound to a location, unable to leave and persue personal activities (say, go to a movie, go out to dinner across town, play video games online, go shopping at something other than a local grocery store, etc), or are mandated to be at a computer to handle calls within X minutes of a notice of an alert (the "you can do whatever you want, but you only have 30 minutes to answer a page" idea), then you are essentially work bound, and not free to use your time at your own lesiure. For example, if while on-call, you could go spend a weekend at your parents, so long as you answer calls per company policy, and meet SLAs for handling issues, they you are only required to be paid while actually working, but if that company required you to stay "within 15 minutes of a connected computer at all times while on-call" then you are work bound, and must be compensated at at least a base acceptible rate during that time, including time-and-a-half as mandated for hours over 40.
For example, at one of my employers, all i was required to do was return a paged call within 30 minutes. once the call was returned, it took about 5 minutes to determine what the issue was, but we had a 4 hour response SLA, so you could tell a customer, "I'm on call, and not at home, I'll call you back in 2 hours..." and that was acceptible. We were only paid for time actually logged on calls (rounded to the nearest hour). At another job, The 1 week a month you were on call, you were expected to keep a quiet household, be at home at all times aside from quick errands, and if you got a call, it had to be answered immediately, and you had to be logged in within 20 minutes of the call. We were paid 50% time for all hours "on call" except meals and sleeping and 100% time on calls (and time and a half as it applied only to time on calls).
Further, in many states (including this one), even if only billable when actually on a call, it is illegal to be paid for less than 3 hours in any 24 hour period, regardless of the number of hours worked. It's also illegal to be compensated for less than 1 hour for any block of time spent working that is more than 1 hour apart from another billable hour. For example: on Sunday, you get a call at 10AM that lasts 30 minutes. You get another call at 3PM that lasts only 15 minutes. They have to pay yo
Here is an actual, reasonable policy (Score:3, Interesting)
This question seems to be a FAQ and SlashDot. Here is an approximation of what I posted last time. It is/was the actual policy at a Fortune 500 technology company during a time when I was the PHB that had to pay for the 24x7 coverage on a particular server.
For your 40 hrs/week, you get your regular pay. For your time "on the pager", you get 25% of your regular hourly, until such time as it goes off. From the time the pager goes off, until you clear the trouble ticket, you get 100% plus any applicable shift/holiday/overtime premium.
If you can dial in remotely and fix the problem, great for everyone. If not, you must be able to get from wherever you are to the server room in 30 minutes. 100% of the time you are on the pager, you must be in condition to work, ie: sober.
So... does that sound like getting paid 25% for doing nothing? Not to me. You can't get more than a 30 minute drive from the plant -- so no ski trips for you that weekend. Going to a party? Better have cranberry juice. You are getting paid for making yourself available.
My company had a policy that the cost of 24x7 coverage came out of the budget of the PHB demanding it. A very good policy, IMHO. Its too easy to ask for it otherwise, without considering the consequences, both in terms of dollar cost, and in terms of quality of life for the employees that provide the coverage.
What a cry baby... (Score:3, Interesting)
If he can't change his rates because someone else is willing to do it, then tough. That's what the world of contracting is all about. Sorry your company laid you off and then re-hired you this way. Get off your ass and get another job, and deal with it until you can. If you can't get another job, maybe you just aren't that good. Deal with that also, it means you have to take the shit jobs to earn a living.
And why is a webmaster being called at all hours of the day and night?? Is it because the site keeps going down?? Then it's your own fucking fault
Get some cajones and learn to stand up and take responsibility for your own life. You let people take advantage of you, this happens.
My on-call stories (Score:3, Interesting)
My first on call job I had programming call centers for a major company. My basic job was manning the hotline during the weekday from 6am-3pm, doing tickets, and whatnot. The rest was being on call which was shared for a week between 5 people. Every week, there was one primary, and one alternate. The primary from the following week was the alternate for the next week, and so on. It came out that you were only on call 2 out of 5 weeks, and that was fine.
Until the politics came into play.
After about a year, one person "graduated" to a new position where he wouldn't have to be on call. Another person left the company, and was never really replaced. So now I was on call 2/3 weeks. In theory. The other two people were very lazy. One of them was some Orthodox religious person who seemed to have major holidays and festivals about twice a month where she could not be on call and she'd "trade weeks" with one of us, but never really did more than say she'd take "next week, for sure." The other was a kind of a nightclub-hopping single "ladies man" who dressed sharp and partied hard. Even when he was on call, he couldn't hear the pager or would take hours to reply.
My boss just rolled over, because she was afraid they'd pull some EOE stint, and she was sort of passing the time until she left on maternity leave. So I was unofficially "on call" 24x7 for about half a year. I got paged about 2-3 times a night, on average, with jobs that went from a 5-10 minute fix to some that lasted many hours. I got no extra pay, and when review time came around, I got a 3% raise. I was making about a third of the wages of someone else in my position, so she pulled the "well, you're not perfect enough for industry standard" card. My response was to quit.
For up to a year afterward, I still got a few calls a month from the former clients, vendors, and business partners. Most knew I didn't work there anymore, but, "Pleeeeeaaaaase, can you fix this? No one is answering the pages!" No.
In other jobs, I was compensated with unofficial "comp time," and sometimes a cash bonus as a kind of "thanks for covering our ass." Comp time works like, "You worked all night fixing that?" Pfft, don't come in tomorrow, or "I am adding an extra vacation day you can use in any way you see fit later."
Pay people to be available or risk them leaving. (Score:3, Interesting)
I've worked this way for years. (Score:3, Interesting)
I do this kind of work for a living, as a consultant who provides support for the work I've done.
In one case, a client of mine relies pretty heavily on my work and has for many years. She knows that if she calls with an urgent problem, I'll do everything I reasonably can to get back to her as quickly as possible -- day or night. In return, she knows not to raise the panic flag on little stuff during off hours. That's good enough in most cases.
We've talked about going to an SLA with, for example, a 4 hour response time on critical issues. My answer to that, is that when we move from "best reasonable effort" to a contracted response time -- even though I am nearly always inside that window already -- the cost goes from being covered by our regular work to several thousand dollars a month. Once it's a contracted promise like that, I have to keep backup people trained on the systems in case I'm on a long flight or get sick (or whatever) and I have to wear a pager, and get no time off without paying someone to cover for me.
There are ABSOLUTELY times when it makes sense to pay for that kind of coverage. I could even argue that this system is important enough that she should do it, but I also have to be clear that for 99% of the time -- and has always been the case for the last ehemteen years -- it will be money that doesn't buy any new results.
Re:Is Dazed and Confused really bad at his job? (Score:4, Insightful)
It seems you've never dealt with these kinds of people. :)
Even if his system is rock solid, with "free 24/7 contact" (essentially what we're talking about here), one can expect calls at all hours of the day or night with such wonderful nuggets as these:
"I know you're not the website-guy/guy who does the copy/whatever, but..." ...
[SELECT]
[OPTION] We'd really like to change the text on our About Us page
[OPTION] The main page is off center on our senior partner's (320x200) screen
[OPTION] The site is running really slow (9/10 times, some asshole in the office has eDonkey/Bittorrent going full blast)
"... and ..."
[SELECT]
[OPTION] the website-guy is out of town
[OPTION] the website-guy wants to charge us
[OPTION] the website-guy isn't taking our calls since we decided not to pay him
[OPTION] we trust your work more <====== My personal favorite. Get your waders out...
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Fire fighters have very specific regulations for what their hours can be like, and a separate section in American labor laws. They are one of the few occupations that are allowed to work more than 12 hours in a 24 hour period, but at the same time they are required to have 48 hours off after that 24 hour period except under explicit "emergency" conditions that are defined by law. Anybody comparing how firefighters are treated to an IT service tech is likely to find themselves seeing that it is the IT tech