I've been at my job for a little over four years, work Monday through Friday, and occasional weekend shifts we have to sign up for where only one person has to work. Someone has to work a shift every weekend and we create a new schedule every 3 months. It averages out to 4-5 weekend shifts every 3 months per person, but the silver lining is we get to pick a day off during the week to make back the time.
They announced today that on top of the regular weekend shifts we also need to sign up for, on average, 4-5 additional weekend shifts every 3 months where we would be the on-call back up in case the one person originally scheduled calls out. For those days we have to be close to work, available to work instantly, be alert for a potential phone call that morning in case of a call out. What bothers me about this is we'd essentially be getting one day off during these, because we would have to treat that on-call day as a work day. Go to bed early the night before. Can't go out and do things that entire day either because we have to be in close proximity to work that whole time just in case that person needs to leave early, etc , etc.
This all started because someone called out sick for a weekend shift and the supervisor had to go in since none of us picked up or responded. I was sick, but I digress. This is the first time this has happened in the almost 4 1/2 years I've worked at this company and it seems like complete over kill for one time but I don't know. I'm just upset because this is the type of thing that is a slow dive into living and breathing work. If the manager didn't like going in that one day, imagine how all the workers are going to feel barely ever having 2 whole freaking days off where they can live their life, when the supervisor will have infinite 2 day weekends.
Their reasoning is it had been done before. The only two people in management are brand new, so whoever did it before was an entirely different management team, and under a different contractor company several years ago before all of the current employees started working there, so I don't see how it applies. Is this legal? Knowing how things are, probably, and we can do fuck all about this.