Not Being Paid For On Call Hours Worked

[Daryle]

My husband is working in the EMS profession and is often on call for 12 hours over night.  While on call, they receive a flat rate of $85 and are required to stay at the station the entire call shift.  His regular wage when working is $12/hour.  The $85 does not add up to what he should be paid for 12 hours at $12/hour.  However, he is in agreeance to be paid the $85 for call if he is not required to stay at the station. He and his coworkers are trying to get some evidence together about the laws before confronting the manager.  Any help would be greatly appreciated!  Can someone tell me where I can specifically find this law in GA?  

[Crossland]

April - "On call" is a term that has a specific meaning in labor law.  It described hours that may or may not need to be compensable, depending on whether an employee is free to pursue his or her activities but is able to respond in a timely manner when contacted to respond to a job.  The Department of Labor said this in an Opinion Letter:

Whether hours spent on call are compensable hours of work is a question of fact to be decided in the context of a given case, based upon a variety of criteria. As explained in 29 C.F.R. § 785.17, “[a]n employee who is required to remain on the employer’s premises or so close thereto that he cannot use the time effectively for his own purposes is working while ‘on call.’”

If a person is working, that person must be paid for the time.  Your husband and his co-workers are not free to leave the station; therefore, he is working and entitled to receive his full hourly wage for each of the twelve hours.  That means, too, that those hours must be included in calculating overtime.

Georgia does not have much that will help you.  You are more likely to be helped by the federal Department of Labor.  Georgia's Labor Department will just send you there if you call them, so skip the step and go straight to the federal office to file a complaint.  They also have a toll free number that you can find by checking the Department of Labor website.  The specific law that governs this is the Fair Labor Standards Act.

What I am writing is relevant to private companies only; if your husband is a Fire Department employee, there are very different rules for them that I am not as familiar with.