I Work For The Shreveport Fire Department In Shreveport, Louisiana As A Fire Communications Officer. Since Being Employed In 1996 We Have Received 4 Hours Of Compensation For Every 24 Hours Of Being On Call. We Are Issued Pagers From Our Department And Have To Respond To Work Within A Reasonable Amount Of Time(use To Be 30 Minute Time Limit, But Some Employees Live 45 Minutes Away) So Lets Say Within The Hour We Have To Be To Work After Being Paged. As Coming In To Work Our Same Job Responsiblities Apply (so No Alchol Consumption While On Call Is Allowed) Last August In 2005 They Quit Giving Us Any Compensation For Being On Call But We Are Still Responsible For Taking Call. Is This Leagl?

What is it with this pattern I'm seeing of people posting with every word capitalized? For the future, Connie, please don't do that. It makes your post very hard to read and in fact, if your post were longer, some responders wouldn't even try to read it. Help us help you by using standard capitalization.

You do not have to be compensated just for being on call. It's only if use of your personal time is "unduly restricted" (which is a much harder standard to meet in this day of cell phones and pagers than it used to be) that you have to be compensated.

In the absence of an undue restriction, you only have to be compensated if you are called in to work.

Sorry about typing every word in caps. For some reason it must have done it when I had my cap lock on. So I'm understanding that I work 4 shifts on and 4 shifts off and during those 4 shifts off we take call for 48 hours. I can not go out of town or consume alcohol through those 48 hours and that is legal not give comp time. I thought the labor law was that 4 hours will be given for every 24 hours of being on call?

There's no Federal law that says that and if your state law does, this is the first I've heard of it. I'm not going to say it's impossible, though. Bears, is this something you're familiar with?

You can always check with your state DOL.