Hi,
I am going to be as vague as possible. I work in the corporate housing industry and they have seen an influx of international requests which requires someone to be working from 8pm-7am central and Saturday/Sundays day and night shifts. Our managers told us on a meeting and asked people to volunteer to be “on call” for the night shifts and Saturday/Sunday until they could find people who could actually work.
Now being “on call” is not as bad as actually having to be at your desk working, but the base pay is $50 and caps out at $150 if you take “6 or more calls” for an 11 hour shift. Which equates to $13.60 an hour. Also, if you are on call during the night shift you are still expected to come in and work your 8 hour shift the next day. Now, I am a deep sleeper so essentially I would have to stay up the whole night and then still come and work my 9-5 job the next day.
They keep on emphasizing it is voluntary but we just got an email today that replying to the email asking us is mandatory and they gave us a list of the slots still needing to be filled. Mostly Saturdays and Sundays from 7am-8pm, 8pm-7am and one Thursday night shift. They also gave us a “fair warning” if they don't get the slots filled for next month they may become mandatory and will be assigned.
However, we were under the impression they were hiring someone to work these hours and now it is seeming like we might have to do this going into March as well. I don't know what to do because it seems like they are threating us w/mandatory on call shifts next month so someone will take these remaining slots in February. I feel like I am going crazy because I refuse to give in to the pressure and work these slots because I appreciate a work-life balance and we are already understaffed and work past our normal weekday shifts anyways.