[bob_roboto]

The problem is that on-call is something in between work and not work. Depending on how often you are actually paged, it is closer to one or the other. As such, the policy I usually implement is simple:

- Being on-call is compensated, although at a much lower rate. The compensation is for the inconvenience of having to carry you computer with you, not being able to get drunk, not sleeping as well (if that applies to you), etc.

- When you get paged, you can generously compensate that time as TOIL. E.g. if you get paged and you realise it's a false positive and go back to bed, you can still compensate 2h as you need to fall back asleep and likely will not be as rested. If you have to do something for 4 hours, take off a day because you likely had to cancel some personal plans or have not had any meaningful sleep at night.

[fckthisguy]

If I can't drop everything, fly abroad, and disappear into the wild because my boss needs me to do something, then I'm at work. Everything else is just an excuse to pay me less whilst still taking a tole on me mentally.

[eurasiantiger]

Do firemen get paid for sleeping at the station, or only for hours when there is an emergency?

[bob_roboto]

It actually depends on the country (and I assume even state and city). Where I grew up, most firemen actually sleep at home and not at the station. They have "normal" work hours during which they do non-emergency work, such as train, maintain equipment, raise awareness for fire prevention, etc. and they get paid for a target work week of ~40 hours. Being called out "outside" of hours is compensated, AFAIK in TOIL. Point being, there is no one size fits all model and it has to work for your environment.

Asking for being on-call for 7 days to be equivalent of 168h of work, i.e. after you have been on-call for a week you go on vacation for 3 weeks is just as unreasonable in most situations as companies asking their staff to be on-call without additional compensation.