Our company has a staff of 5 IT technicians (myself included) who provide on call services 24x7x365 with a rotating weekly pager. We get a call rate of probably 3-4 calls per week but can go as high as 10, depending on the full moon.
We get a yearly sum of money for this service which is perhaps 2% of a total salary.
The company believes this is fair and isn’t really willing to go any higher in terms of cash, offering extra vacation time (where we may get called anyway), or any other perks.
We can’t convince the company that IT is an essential service and should be compensated accordingly to provide such a service. Their argument is that all other salaried staff have to show up for work in times of crisis and aren’t being paid any extra at all.
They won’t budge and we’re burning out. Any advice?