On call from home - Pay/ working time regulations

[Ruby83]

I currently participate in an on-call service within a care organisation and I am trying to clarify if we should be paid at least the minimum wage for this, instead of the current flat rate (which is very low).
I have found some info, but it continues to appear to be a grey area.
Whilst on-call I am expected to:
Stay within a 30 minute drive of the town- but also respond quickly in an emergency (I have requested further info on this)
Not drink alcohol, or take drugs, including I assume, some prescription drugs that could affect your ability to drive
Have access to a suitably insured vehicle at all times

I am on-call for the sake of covering sickness by redeploying people, and going myself if cover can't be found.
Answering the phone, which at times can be quiet, but can also be excessive, for example over 30 phone calls, and at worst nearly 50 calls, meaning I am technically unable to leave my home due to the phone constantly ringing.

From my understanding if you are on on-call from home, you should be able to continue your normal home/social life and go wherever you want, however due to restrictions and calls, this is not possible, therefore I see it, that I should be on at least minimum wage. I think that by taking calls, and dealing with things such as redeployment and cover, that actually I am working and at my employers disposal.

Does anyone have experience of this, have they challenged their own employer? Do you get minimum wage at least? What restrictions are put on you?

I do on-call for IT. We get a flat on-call rate, split between the team covering the rota. I think it's £12500 a year currently, split between 4 of us, and you get paid a 12th of your share each month. We are expected to respond within 15 minutes and if required, be on-site within 30 minutes. (There's more than one site, and we all live at least 40 minutes away from our closest because we all live close to the day office.
Most calls can be dealt with remotely, so this hasn't been an issue to date.)

We are expected to remain sober. We can travel if we can still be contactable and have access to log on remotely, so I can run the usual weekend errands, and I've been to a friend's party in the next town (I did have to log on during that one.) But I can't go and see my sister two hours away.

If we do more than half an hour of actual work, we can claim TOIL or overtime, but there's a preference for us to take time rather than money.

Our colleagues in the Netherlands (and how it worked in a previous job) was that you get a rate for each shift on call (overnight, or weekend/bank holiday day.) You got a payment for each call (around £5), and then they can claim for actual time worked. I prefer that way.

So for us, we are paid to be on-call, which compensates for our lives being restricted during an on-call week, and we get paid for actual work. There are occasionally bad shifts with a major outage, but hardware is much more resilient these days, and it's not like it was when I first started, and you could get several calls a night, and several bad shifts in a row.

I would definitely be complaining if I didn't feel I was fairly compensated for it, but currently, (shouldn't say this while I'm actually on-call,) we have it pretty easy these days. Obviously a completely different industry and type of duty, and therefore of limited use.

I agree that you are actually working and should be compensated. Also, as well as minimum wage, you should be allowed recovery time - we are allowed to go in late if we have a busy on-call shift. I think the working time directive says you should have 11 hours between shifts, but there could be some other wording to cover on-call, haven't read it in a while. If it's really that busy, it would make more sense to me to have someone cover it as an actual shift, but then they would have to pay an actual wage, not on-call rate.

If you're in a union, you should ask them.

I’m a midwife we regularly do on-calls. We have the same expectations as you. We get a flat rate of £20 for being on-call and then our hourly rate only if we are called out. It’s legally not classed as work unless you have to stay within the premises.