[arthurkc]

What is considered as a bench mark for on-call pay for Delivery staff and Respiratory staff. The hourly rate paid just to be on-call?

[HEATHER]

Our company used to pay drivers $20/day ($50 on holidays) to be on call +
normal wages, whether they had to go out or not. They were responsible for
answering phone/pager and delivery. Now management answers the calls and
delivery techs only get above bonuses only IF they actually have to go out.

[SimplyLori]

We're a small company so we don't get called out too too much. We (owners) usually take weekday calls. Weekends get $50.00 flat pay PLUS time paid at overtime for any time they have to leave home. Holidays get an additional $25.00 per day.

[turkey]

I am a respiratory care practitioner and have just started working for a company that pays a flat rate of $50 per week and $25 per call instead of your regular hourly wage or time and a half if it goes beyond 40 per week. I have worked on a call out of town for 4 hours and only gotten payed the $25 when it should have been time and a half. One of the drivers was told to clock out at 6PM to prevent overtime and get payed the flat $25 while on call. From what I have read about the labor law, it looks like this is a violation. I fear for my job if I say anything. Any suggestions and if I am correct on my interpretation of the law?

[HEATHER]

For hourly employees, it depends on:
1. How many hours you put in for the week
2. What your hourly wage is
3. How much of a bonus you got for the week.

If the bonus you receive is equal to or greater than what you would have
been paid at your hourly/OT rate - then I am told they are within Federal
law. But any company paying bonuses instead of wages should really document
ALL of your hours so they could prove they were in compliance on any given
week. Salaried employees are different and don't have to be paid anything
extra. Now your state may have different laws but this is federal law.

[DMEisgoodfun]

You're interpretation is correct. The flat rate is payment for the
inconvenience of having to stay close to your work, answer your phone/pager
at all hours, etc...Once you're called in to work, your employer should be
paying you at your regular rate, or overtime if appropriate.

[turkey]

Thanks for the reply.

[Mike Kuller]

We pay our drivers $100 a week to answer the pages and calls after hours from Friday at 7:30pm to Monday at 8:30am. If they have to go out, they get paid OT.

We have a 10:30 to &pm driver shift Tuesday through Friday and then Sat. 8:30 to 5 which has eliminated a lot of after hours calls and stops.

The VP of Sales and Ops Mgr. rotate being on call (at no extra pay) each week to take/qualify new orders.

[whozleft]

We currently pay our on call staff 1.50/hour for weekday on call hours, and 2.50/hour for weekend on call hours. They also receive $30.00 extra for each time they actually have to come in.

It amounts to 232.50/week for being on call + $30.00 for each trip out. Fortunately most of our calls are handle over the phone.

[JoeyGraham]

We got in trouble by the State of Florida because we used to pay on-call employees a bonus for taking call. Basically the bonus has to be figured into their regular pay rate, meaning our overtime pay rate calculation was wrong. Now we pay employees a weekly differential for taking call. The differentials are as follows: service techs $2.78/hr (average results $145/week); RT $2.00/hr (average results $100/week); CSR $6.25/hr (average results $250/week); pharmacy techs $4.37/hr (average results $175/week). These rates are based on the average number of call-outs per week per position. The CSR gets the most because they take a ton of calls after-hours. The RT gets the least because its extremely rare that they get called out.
I hope this helps with your benchmarking.