My work wants to start mandating everyone to take the after hours support phone (mon-fri 6-9 and 8-6 on weekends). It only pays $200 a week and 1/4 a vacation day. There was a meeting about increasing the pay to $300 and pay on a per call basis but that has yet to see the light of day. Currently I refuse to take the phone (unless I really have to) because I don’t think $200 is worth it. The phone averages about 20 calls a week.
I’m paid hourly and I don’t think they can legally force me to take this phone, considering they never mentioned that when I accepted the job.
Any ideas on how I can know for sure if they can do this?
New York is employment at will. If they arent discriminating against who takes it and makes it mandatory through the company and rotates, deal with it or quit.
They are paying you to carry a phone and still have a life, not to sit at a desk in the office.
We have a on call phone that rotates every week. The alarms call out to you and you can hear the issue. The person on call gets paid an additional 3 standard hours for having the phone and any issues you respond to can be put down as over time.
My last company didnt have any compensation for the oncall pager. Just part of the job. D
I’m in the middle of a workforce management class, so I have actual education on this fresh in my mind.
The correct answer is: Yes, they can do that.
If you were in a protected class and they seemed to be singling you out, then no they probably couldn’t. But if they’re just changing the job requirements then that’s fine.
You are at the will of your employer in NY state. Its amazing what people can do. For example, your boss can walk in one day and say “Anyone wearing red is fired.” and not be sued. Only thing would be is if red was worn by only protected classes(women, african americans, hispanics, etc) that day or something.
:lol: He could fire all the fat people except for the really fat people because if you BMI is 100 or higher you’re morbidly obese and thus disabled and protected.
It doesn’t matter if I am hourly? The thing is I am pretty much tied to my house when being on call because a few calls NEED to be done on the computer. It’s pretty much like 35 hours of overtime for $200…