I work for a 33 person municipal law enforcement agency in Indiana. Recently, the 3 members of our department who are trained as crime scene technicians (no additional compensation is provided for this duty) were told that we would be placed on a rotating on call status and subject to call outs during our normally scheduled days off. The expected response time (time that we are on our way to the call) when called out was 20 minutes...since modified to 30 minutes.
At the time the three of us obtained the specialized training, the "handshake" agreement was that respond if you can, but primarily, issues with child care and scheduling (one tech assigned to days, 2 to afternoons) left the night shift not covered and prompted the formal "on call" schedule.
When asked about additional compensation for the increased responsibility and after some discussion, another handshake agreement was reached in which the techs would receive a comp day for each 3 served on call, but this was pending a discussion between an administrator with our deparment and an Indiana Dept of Labor rep. Within the last couple of days, the administrator informed us that after his conversation with the Dept. of Labor rep, our situation did not qualify as meeting requirements for truely being "on-call" as it was not overly burdensome, but our response time was raised from the 20 minutes to 30...Any ideas on where I can get further info? I've found myself having to restrict my travel to ensure compliance with the response time, even going as far as to drive separately to church and other events to meet the mandated response time and find it hard to believe that this is not in an on-call status as recognized by the state....