I work for local government as a mechanic. There are 4 of us and we all alternate an on call phone. On the days we work we get an additional hour added and our days off two hours to our time sheet. It's a total 9 hours per guy per month. It's in the employee handbook that every department has someone on call, we're also the ones who work on the all the Police vehicles and all the ambulances for the fire department. He's playing the narrative that we're in a budget crisis when we're not. He just wants to make it look like he can run things cheaper than the last manager who just retired. His plan is for our supervisor to always have the phone and he'll dispatch us when something happens. So he doesn't have to pay us for being on call.
He asked everyone what their opinion is and we laughed in his face. We told him the only way that's happening is if he gets on call shut down for every department in the city since it's in the handbook, I told him if they ever call me on my day off I'll be drunk and unable to help. One person said the hours paid out for on call sounds much cheaper than a lawsuit when an ambulance breaks down on a Saturday. Another guy told him he's cutting his hours and he'll be at his new part time job. My boss then said if you're depending on extra hours in the workweek to pay your bills then you're doing something wrong. So we pretty much all said the same thing that it sounds like he's telling us we need better jobs. He thinks we won't leave cause “Government employees have it too good.”