On call compensation

Gonz,
You should be compensated for any over-and-above stated duties. I think it was wrong that your employer didn't mention that task as part of your employment interview. If they won't/don't pay for collateral duties, approach them with an accumulated COMPENSATION-TIME OFF agreement (You have a life too!). That was our solution for this.

from company to company. Most large mulitnationals probably already have a policy in place, check with your HR rep.

The most generous one I've worked with gave me $30 per 8 hour shift on call, and if paged, a minimum 1.5 hours of overtime for responding. Othe companies I have seen pay 30 for the 16 hours, plus the same minimum for being paged.

You also want to define the paging process - who pages you, and for what types of problems. Trust me get it in writing. I've had pages in the middle of the night from project managers who came up with great business ideas that could have easily waited until morning.

You will also have to work out some backup - you cannot be on call 24/7/365. If you are in a multinational company, you should be able to find a peer who you can trade favours with.

Hope that helps.

James

Hi

There's no reason why the requirements of your job can't change, as long as you agree to being on call. I have found that as long as the compensation is adequate, I can put up with it. However in the places I've worked there has always been one or more people that I shared the duty with, so was not on call for more than a month straight.

On the compensation side, have a look at a discussion on Slashdot from last year:
http://slashdot.org/askslashdot/00/10/17/1844229.shtml

I recently reviewed my conditions with some others in the industry, and found that almost all people going on call received extra pay. It was usually between 5 and 12 percent on top of their hourly rate, and sometimes included time in lieu or additional payments for the calls received.

But the biggest thing to watch is that you don't get abused. Ensure that there is a criteria for "emergency" so that you don't get calls from people who forget their passwords...

William

Whatever was done to u is bad. But if u are able to get an increase in pay(a substantial one at that) then this might prove to be good for u.
And yeah if possible start looking for a better job with a bigger company.

make sure you stipulate late now what on call measn to you and any compensation changes, so you dont get abused
you go to a global and it could happen if you are understaffed and they intend to stay that way to see what YOU do about it.

rememberif you are hourly in some states and not making the minimum wages for your particualr field (esp. in high tech) and you wear a pager and are expected to have more duties for the present wages, then you should be salaried, and compensation to accomodate this on call status, time off in leiu of pay, or rate hike.

alot of ppl are overworked since the HB-1 visas cannot seem to be raised to meet the 900,000 IT jobs going unfilled in USA btw now and 2010.
so keep your eyes peeled, they may be happy to pay you more to add these duties, rather than train someone else. I know ppl who make double now that their duties changed for varying employers. Some contract and some salaried.