Re: What's your compensation for carrying a pager???

Glen A Stromquist <glen_stromquist_at_no_spam_yahoo.com> writes:
> Richard wrote:
>
>> My employer currently pays me $1/hour when I carry a pager. I have
>> to carry the pager every fourth week. The problem is that my
>> employer insists that I be available when I'm carrying the pager.
>> So, for $1/hr they expect me to remain within pager range, remain
>> sober, and be available to come to work. That really sucks on
>> weekends. No going to the beach (out of pager range) or out to a
>> friend's cottage (out of pager range), etc. Declining to carry the
>> pager is NOT an option. I'm curious what compensation others get
>> and more importantly, what's your employers expectation of your
>> availability when you're on-call? Thanks.
>>
> I carry a pager and a cell, and get squat for it, its a condition of
> employment. We take turns being on call for weekends, but basically
> we all are anyway, the on-call person will just contact me if the
> problem is db related anyway, same goes for our network guys, as400
> guys etc. I do a lot of after hours monitoring & work on my own
> anyway, in turn I get a lot of flexibility, if I want to leave early
> to watch one of my kids school event I go, no questions asked. As
> long as everything runs and runs smoothly things are ok. Works for
> me anyway...

That sort of thing is tenable for "departmental" systems; it's much less so for truly 24x7 systems that need to be monitored all the time.

We have some of the latter variety; the arrangement is $20/day, with (1 + some percentage) of hourly rate additional compensation when calls come in, with a minimum time period that gets billed.

If I never get called, I'll get $140 for a week on call. If I get paged in the night, I'm sure to get an hour or two of compensation.

This arrangement feels reasonably fair.

There may be situations where employers feel they have their employees "over the barrel" and can demand off-hours services at no charge. That can, of course, be the justification for almost any sort of unkindness.

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