Alaska Employment Law

A recent non-Administrator’s letter from the U. S. Department of Labor addressed the compensability of on-call time for ambulance employees.  The Department advised that on-call periods in the winter were compensable, and that on-call times in the summer were not compensable under FLSA. 

The staff member’s reasoning was as follows:

Based on the situation you describe, it is our opinion that the time spent waiting on call during the winter season is sufficiently restrictive to make it compensable under the FLSA. We base this conclusion on the following combination of factors: the extremely short in-person response time [8 minutes to reach the station], which precludes the effective use of the on-call time for all but the narrowest range of personal purposes, all of which must take place within a restricted geographic area to allow for such a rapid response; the high number of call-ins (requiring one response every four hours); the apparent impossibility of trading on-call responsibilities because both employees are on call five days per week; and the inability to turn down any of the call-ins. Given the very short in-person response time, the employees’ use of a pager provides only limited relief. It is also our opinion that during the non-winter seasons, if the frequency of calls is as described in your letter (once or twice per week, and in some weeks none), the time spent waiting on call would not be compensable.

The Alaska Supreme Court recently opined on remote site on-call time in AirLogistics of Alaska, Inc. v. Throop, 181 P.3d 1084 (Alaska 2008).

H/T: The Laconic Law Blog