How much extra to be on call 24x7?

[davidpn]

Firstly, I wasn't too sure where to post this thread so I hope this is the best place.

I work for a company in the UK and am based in London. My team deal mainly with second and some third line support. We officially work from 0900 - 1730, Mon-Fri and get single time if we have to work after 1900 during the week, time and a half if we work on Saturday and double for Sundays.

My company are now proposing a change in our contracts. We will be expected to be on call, 24x7, every third week and will be provided with a company mobile (for business use only) to facilitate this. In order to compensate us, we are being offered the following (regardless of grade and location in the UK):

Overtime at 1.5x Mon-Fri (instead of 1x)
Overtime starts at 1800 (instead of 1900)
GBP1,500 per year extra salary

The company don't envisage a large number of callouts (but reality might be another story), perhaps two or three per year where we have to get up and go into the office. Even so, do you think GBP1,500 a year + overtime is enough? I don't want to sound greedy but I like my sleep and I know of one other company where the employees get GBP4,200 extra for being on call. Can anyone offer an opinion or tell me of their experiences?

 

[KenCunningham]

When I worked shifts and was part of an on-call rota, the shift allowance was 12.5% gross and any call outs were paid at double time, with a minimum of 3 hours per call out (for example, if you were called out and took only 5 minutes to fix something, you'd still be paid the 3 hours). If you have to traverse London for the call-out I think I'd be looking for more compensation for that too.

This, of course, was 5 years ago when the IT job market was fairly buoyant and it's true to say that things have tightened up rather in the intervening years.

 

[rfr100]

I was offered a position doing 24x7 and the pay was as follows.

An extra full days pay for each night on call
For a call out - additional - 2 x hourly rate from the minute you leave home to the minute you return plus fuel allowance.

I would have taken it but budget cuts got rid of my job before I started. Grr.

It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious.

 

[hilfy]

When I was doing on-call at my first programming job, I didn't get ANY extra.

The product (combined hardware and software) was used in hospitals and invariably had to be rebooted during the 11pm shift change. I was in TN and one of our test sites was in CA, so I would get a page at 2am so I could tell them to reboot the machine. The stress of the situation was such that I soon left that job and moved to Atlanta for a better one.

-Dell

 

[ecobb]

At my last job, they decided to put everyone in the company on 24x7 "on call" duty. All we got was an extra $50 per month to carry a pager, we had to get permission if we wanted to go out of town on the weekends, and we always had our vacation requests denied becuase they couldn't risk one of us being gone if something happend. We never recieved any compensation for overtime or lost vacation time. And they wonder why they can't keep employees...

Be thankful they offered you something!



Hope This Helps!

Ecobb

"My work is a game, a very serious game." - M.C. Escher

 

[flapeyre]

The programmers rotate being on-call on a weekly basis, from Monday to Sunday. You get an extra $75.00 while on call. You have to respond to help desk cases (for top-priority only) from 4PM until 10PM. However, the system can page the programmer if a job has problems, and you have to answer those messages 24/7.

De mortuis nihil nisi bonum.

 

[lespaul]

We have a 10 person office, rotate on-call weekly.

I have gotten calls in the middle of the night and only had to go to my study and fix it from home, other times I have had to come down to work.

I get comp time at 1 1/2 times actual hours worked. But like mentioned above, who ever gets leave approved, especially when it's comp?

Luckily I have had some of the easier weeks on call. Some weeks the on call gets paged daily, some weeks not at all.





Leslie

 

[willir]

I guess we can agree on-call and after hours support is a contract between those providing the support and the employer.

I support a one-man / person site - 120 people, 24x7 semi-hazardous production environment; have been for years, and it is in my best interest to be proactive.

When I signed on, I knew I would be the sole support provider and I would be on-call 24x7. The agreement was that I would get 1.5x for after hours work, but no premium for carrying a pager, etc.

I had my rough days.

The most humorous event was Dec 31, 1999 - Yep, the Y2K thing. We had shut down the plant, and there was one supervisor on site plus myself. My job was run Y2K tests on the process control stuff. While I was running my tail off, the supervisor had his feet on the table, relaxing.

My comment to him was that he must be pretty upset having to work when nobody else was, and I was sure he would rather be out with his spouse enjoying the evening. His told me he was getting paid triple time, and was making over a $1000 a day - small price to pay. I pocketed considerably less than that.

He was union; I am not.

davidpn:
Friendly amendments to bring back to the table...
- Define a minimum time if you get called-in. At least one hour; many have a 3 hr minimum
- Make sure you can swap after-hours coverage times with someone else. If a wedding falls on your weekend type of thing...
- There may be laws in place in the UK for a maximum amount of straight work one can do. I once had to work over 70 hrs, have 3 hrs shut eye and come back to work. In such a situation, either set things up to have some one else come in, or to move to triple time.
- Time in-lieu should be available at the employee’s request. If you swap OT hours worked for regular hours, do not settle for an even swap.
- For call-ins, consider adding commuting costs. Companies will have a fixed rate per KM.
- Management may want to cut costs, and may ask for you to take time in-lieu instead of being paid OT. Should probably have a policy agreement on this possible issue too.

OT and after hours support has an inherent personal conflict of interest. Some want to make money, and may actually devise ways of increasing their OT. Others want time with family and for some funny reason their pager did not work. Management wants to avoid OT but realizes they have a business to support.

The amount in compensation you presented seem fair. I have seen better and I have seen worse.

 

[jtb]

since my job was defined as "not 8-5" I work out the OT with my manager... we don't always have a big bonus pool; but the opportunity for CTO between projects has given me as much as 2 weeks extra vacation in some years...

just a sort of alternative to cash... there are all kinds of alternate compensations...

JTB
Have Certs, Will Travel
"A knight without armour in a [cyber] land."

 

[CasperTFG]

Our company has a policy of a rotating pager. You get to pick the weeks you want to take the pager. They poay $300 USD a week to carry it, plus the OT you get paid if called.

You just have to remember this, it's not the carrying of the phone that you have to way the costs against. It's the disruption to your life. If your on pager duty that week, it means no dinner parties, drinking or going out of town.

Casper

There is room for all of gods creatures, "Right Beside the Mashed Potatoes".

 

[philhege]

We rotate on a monthly basis.
<rant>
Some of you get premiums for carrying it? Must be nice. First day I had the phone this month, I was dragged in from 0200 to 0425 (effing Cobol MRP programs). What did I get? The empty set.
</rant>


pdhpoolplayer1957@yahoo.com

 

[chiph]

I've never gotten paid extra for being on call.

Must be an established-company kind of thing.

Chip H.


____________________________________________________________________
If you want to get the best response to a question, please read FAQ222-2244 first

 

[DoubleD]

I've always been on a rotating beeper schedule. Working in Wisconsin (US), I have never been paid for on call. Is it a regional thing?

Pain is stress leaving the body.

DoubleD

 

[davidpn]

First of all, thanks for all of your posts - most insightful. I can also let you know that we accepted the offer and our contracts were duly amended from the 1st June.

I was particularly interested by those of you that were on call 24x7 and were not reimbursed for it. If you joined a job and this was the way it was from day one then fair enough but when, as in my case, your contracts are changed half way through your employment, to not receive appropriate reimbursement is quite frankly, outrageous!

Thanks again for your posts and keep them coming as I'm quite interested to see what's considered acceptable.

David

 

[chiph]

I've only worked at late-stage startups, and that's par for the course at one.

Chip H.


____________________________________________________________________
If you want to get the best response to a question, please read FAQ222-2244 first

 

[Stella740pl]

Once worked in a group where all programmers were on a rotating schedule for evening application support/help desk, staying in the office for as long as it was necessary, then took the beeper home for that night. Didn't get anything but salary, not even overtime or comp. time (and it was stated in the contract), but if you had to stay later than 9 pm, you could take a cab home paid by the company, from one of the approved car services. Din't make sense to do it if you finished between 9 pm and 10 pm, though, since the services were very busy during this hour, and you had to wait long time for the cab. After 10 pm it was always fast. I, personally, was lucky and almost never got night calls on the beeper.

 

[mountainbiker]

I am on call every third month. I hate it! I don't get called often, but it isn't worth the extra comp time. I get 1.5 hours for every hour worked. What I really hate is the restriction of venturing too far. I didn't agree to it when I started the job, so it bugs me.

 

[OhioBill]

I was on call 24/7 as a contractor. Minimum charge was one hour anytime after 11 pm. I got a few early morning calls, 2 and 3 am, but it was always a serious problem. I later learned that whomever called and started my clock had to explain to upper-middle-lower management why the call was made, and how it couldn't be solved without my expensive assistance.

 

[SQLSister]

On call is a good or as bad as the company you work for. I worked for a subsidiary of one of the largest companies in the world and they changed me from a non-exempt to an exempt employee. (A labor lawyer told me I could have sued them as they changed neither my title nor my duties). Before the change my assistant and I shared teh overtime work (we did network admin). After the change, I did all the after hours work since I could not receive overtime. As this averaged to 30-50 hours a week, I was quite annoyed. So I got a pay cut (lost the overtime I was being paid) and had to wrok many more hours. I was working at least 2-3 18+ hour days every week and every weekend and my assistant who could do all the same things worked 40 hours. The shoretest day i worked was 11 hours. Then I got injured at work and they got mad at me for taking three days off because my doctor told me if I didn't keep my leg propped up, I could die from a blood clot. That's the only job I ever quit without giving notice. Oddly enough they were surprised that I would quit!

When I worked for another large corporation, we had a pager that passed through a group of people. Everyone who had the pager got paid a minimum amount for carrying it that week, plus overtime (minimum 1 hour) if you got called in. Needless to say, those people were alot happier about being on call than I was in the previous job.

 

[kcongdon]

DoubleD,

No, it's not just Wisconsin employers who don't pay overtime. The company I work for here in Alabama doesn't pay anything for on-call---no extra money, no comp time, etc.

Thinking about changing my nick to Future Former Backup Admin