My wife works in the hotel industry. She is on salary. Seven times a year, she has to work a M.O.D. (manager on duty) shift. This is required of all managers at her place of employment. She works her normal work week Mon-Fri. The MOD shift starts Friday @ 5pm and ends Monday @ 7am.
She is put in a room at the hotel and required to be on call the entire time and is considered actively "on the clock". As a "courtesy" she is allowed to come in @ 11am on the Friday beginning the shift and leave @ 2pm on the following Monday. The only compensation she is given is two "comp days" to be used when she wants, meaning they can be banked like vacation days. That is 61 straight hours on the clock with 16 hours compensated.

Is this legal? The 61 hours is on top of her normal 40-50 hour work week.

As an exempt employee, she is never entitled legally to any additional pay over and above her regular salary. Being "on call" does not necessarily mean that all the time is compensable, besides, since she's exempt, it doesn't really make any difference.

Having said that, I believe there is a limit of 72 hours worked in a week, over which the employee can refuse to work without retaliation. I'm not positive, though, if it applies to exempt employees and whether the time she's "on call" would be considered "hours worked" for this purpose, even if it does.

One of our California employment law attorneys should be around tomorrow and they can shed more light on this.

The 72 hour requirement is only contained in Wage Order #4, Section 3. Exemptions exempt the employee from sections 3-12.

A Hotel employee is covered by Wage Order #5, so it is not even applicable. Even if #4 was applicable, it would not apply to exempt employees.

Thus, if you are exempt, you are out of luck. Many managers at hotels are non-exempt. If you spend more than 50% of your time checking in guests, answering the phone and doing other duties not related to managment, there is a good chance you are non-exempt.

Thanks for the clarification, Michael. :)