I have a few questions about "on call" compensation and laws in California:
A tech support company has hourly employees that work M-F 8am-5pm. They get overtime for any hours worked over 8 hours in a day / 40 hours in a week. The company is wanting to implement a rotating schedule where each tech would be required to be on-call during the off hours, for 1 week at a time.
They would be required to carry a company cell phone, respond to calls within 15 minutes and provide remote or onsite support at the client's business if necessary. This restricts the employee on where they can go and what they can do, during non-paid hours. They can't go out of town or to areas where cell phone service is bad. They can't have a few beers at home, because they might be required to go onsite and can't have alcohol in their system. If they go out to dinner or to a movie, they risk having to leave in the middle of it and not get to enjoy what they paid for. Etc.
It would also require paying for an Internet subscription service at home.
My questions are:
- Can the company be required to pay some kind of compensation for being on-call (whether calls happen or not) for the added restrictions during this non-paid time?
- If the tech gets a call after-hours and has to work (has already worked 8 hours that day) are they supposed to be paid a 2-hour minimum at overtime rates?

