Does anybody know labor laws in California that well when it comes to On-Call Policies?
I work in IT, and the company that “employs” us is based in India and provides service to a company (customer) in California. We recently went through a shift, and shifted from one company to the other. Same thing, different names. Ever since the new shift everything has been so hectic. We're about 3 months into the new company, and we still don't have a defined on-call policy. My management has been making up rules on the fly as we go, and it's really starting to get to us. We went from being restricted, to no restrictions and a loose “1-2 hour response time”. Instead of standby, they were doing block hours, where ticket = 2 hour pay, but as of today they've taken that away. We've been told that our overtime for on-call is basically just “whatever we worked”. Except, we've been told that we still need to look at tickets (we get texts for urgent tickets), but we need to decide if we'll respond or not. If it's something that can wait, then we don't get paid. If it's something that we think couldn't have waited, but my manager thinks it could have, then we get a talking to. We haven't even gotten into if we're even supposed to wake up for tickets, but that's what we've been doing since the old company. My lead thinks that thinking about work means we should get paid, but he doesn't have any leverage and is really just our lead in spirit.
I've asked for clarification and policies to be written down multiple times, but management keeps ignoring my questions. The best response I got from my manager says that there's no policy provided, and that we policy is up to the clients and/or management. The policy keeps changing and they don't seem to understand what's going on. The only “on-call” policy they provide, is for our “standby” pay. They verbally told us about standby when we were onboarding, but the basics of is come down to that we really only get paid $40 for 9 hours, even though on weekends we'll be on-call for 24 hours. Here's the actual policy if anybody wants to laugh at it:
$15 for the first 4 hrs, and $5 per hr for each additional hour up to a total of $40.
So basically:
First 4 hours = $15
Ever hour after, is $5/hr.
You max at $40.
I don't really know what to do, as this is my first big job, and I don't have any experience with this type of situation. None of my coworkers who have been here longer are doing anything, and most are either getting ready to jump ship, or are just taking it as is. I've already learned to get everything in writing, since they've been doing a ton of rugpulls on us, especially with this. It's hard when I ask questions, and all I get are either no response or the candid “read the policy” answer. Most of the policies that are actually listed are just generic BS, and I can't find anything that actually lists our job duties anyways.
I would appreciate if anybody can tell me if I have a leg to stand on, and how I can proceed with stopping my company from screwing us over. I really don't know where to go for advice for this kind of thing, so if anybody can guide me or give me advice, I would really appreciate it.