{"id":1499,"date":"2009-08-10T21:49:21","date_gmt":"2009-08-11T01:49:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/old.visionpayroll.com\/kb\/?p=1499"},"modified":"2009-08-10T21:49:21","modified_gmt":"2009-08-11T01:49:21","slug":"us-department-of-labor-issues-opinion-letter-on-on-call-hours-for-water-district-employees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/old.visionpayroll.com\/kb\/2009\/08\/us-department-of-labor-issues-opinion-letter-on-on-call-hours-for-water-district-employees\/","title":{"rendered":"US Department of Labor Issues Opinion Letter on On-Call Hours for Water District Employees"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dol.gov\/\" target=\"_blank\">US Department of Labor (DOL)<\/a> recently issued Administrator signed Opinion Letter <a href=\"https:\/\/old.visionpayroll.com\/kb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/05\/2009_01_16_17_flsa.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">FLSA2009-17<\/a>. Although Opinion Letters only apply to the exact set of facts and circumstances presented in each case, they are a valuable aid in understanding current interpretations of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).<\/p>\n<p>In this Opinion Letter, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dol.gov\/\" target=\"_blank\">DOL<\/a> explained how the FLSA applies to certain on-call employees of a Special Services District (District). The guidelines are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Employees are on-call after normal working hours. On-call hours are assigned on a rotating basis for a one-week period. Employees are on-call approximately every eight weeks, and they may switch schedules with other employees.<\/li>\n<li>The District provides the on-call employee a mobile telephone and a vehicle with necessary tools, should they need to respond to an emergency.<\/li>\n<li>Employees are not restricted to any location while on-call, but are expected to respond within 45 to 60 minutes of receiving an emergency call.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Travel time to the emergency locations generally runs 5-20 minutes, there are 2-5 emergency calls per month, on-call employees generally do not receive more than one call per night, and the average work time at a location is 5-10 minutes.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dol.gov\/\" target=\"_blank\">DOL<\/a> reached the following conclusions:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>The on-call employees need not be compensated for on-call time since the requirements are not so restrictive as to require compensation.<\/li>\n<li>Time spent working after responding to a call is time that employees must be paid for.<\/li>\n<li>If the employee \u201ctravels a substantial distance to an emergency site, the employee must be paid for that time. The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dol.gov\/esa\/whd\/\" target=\"_blank\">Wage and Hour Division (WHD)<\/a>, however, does not take a position as to whether such travel to a regular work site is compensable. Therefore, from a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dol.gov\/esa\/whd\/\" target=\"_blank\">WHD<\/a> enforcement perspective such time is not treated as compensable.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>State laws may provide rules that are more beneficial to the employee and must be followed. Contact <a href=\"mailto:info@visionpayroll.com\" target=\"_blank\">Vision Payroll<\/a> if you have questions about this Opinion Letter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The US Department of Labor (DOL) recently issued Administrator signed Opinion Letter FLSA2009-17. Although Opinion Letters only apply to the exact set of facts and circumstances presented in each case, they are a valuable aid in understanding current interpretations of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). In this Opinion Letter, the DOL explained how the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[154,82,999,163,151,89],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.visionpayroll.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1499"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.visionpayroll.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.visionpayroll.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.visionpayroll.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.visionpayroll.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1499"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/old.visionpayroll.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1499\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1501,"href":"https:\/\/old.visionpayroll.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1499\/revisions\/1501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.visionpayroll.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.visionpayroll.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.visionpayroll.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}