Standby/on call hours

Anonimno

Hi There,

Ive been working for an IT company in Ireland for quite some time and i wanted to ask if there are other similar situations as mine in other companies. I work 1 week in 4 on standby. Standby starts on Friday at 5pm and runs until 10pm. Saturday and Sunday is 9am to 10pm also and then we cover Monday to Thursday 5pm to 10pm every day until the next person takes over on Friday etc. We don't actually get paid an hourly rate, we only get paid when we pick up a call and actually start working. I think that is a bit of a joke because I'm kind of confined to my house and i can't really leave as my equipment is there. There isn't much freedom as a single engineer i cover 78 sites across Ireland so leaving the house to go to the back or for a walk isn't an option on some weekends.

DownByTheGarden

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058295633/standby-on-call-hours

Our company have a similar setup and on call hours to that.

The lads on call get paid €100 per night whether they get called or not (€20 per hour on call). But at weekends they do 12 hours on call each day and get €250 for each weekend day. When they get called their hourly rate kicks in on top of that rate. The hourly rate is paid as the full hour even if you work for just one minute after getting called. 2hrs pay for 61 minutes and so on.

If a call goes out of the on call hours then they are paid another €100 plus hourly rate as its the next day.

Also there is an answer window when they are on call. If you get a call you have 1 hour to get home, so you cant go more than an hour from home. Some companies have a longer answer window but ours is 1 hour.

So if someone was on call for Saturday and Sunday 10am to 10pm they would get €500 (well half of it after tax) even if they dont get a call. And they hardly ever get calls. They are beng paid to be available, which is fair as you say, they are stuck near home and usually so are their families for the days they are on call. IT does effect their lives and the things they can do at the weekends and ion the evenings.

Thats fairly standard across companies that need IT support out of hours, but another company I know of does it by giving a half day off in lieu for each on call day. So if they were on call from 5pm to 10pm they would get a half day added to their holidays. If they were on call for 4 days 5pm to 10pm they would get 2 days holidays added.

Anonimno

We don't get paid anything though, or get any half days in lieu. that's kind of my problem with the setup. We only get paid for how much we work. You could be on call all day Saturday and Sunday in our company and you get 0 for it. There are no daily rates. The only time you would make money is if you pick up the phone. Which that could also be nothing because the call could last only 10 mins, sometimes 1 hour.

DownByTheGarden

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120578579#Comment_120578579

Sounds like Ryanair. You only get paid when you are in the air.

I know what I would be doing if I had your job. "Oh sorry, I didnt hear the phone", "Oh sorry, I left my phone at home and I was out".

There is a diffreence between working hours and your own hours.

And look for a new job while I was at it.