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(a) General. Typically, “call-back” or “call-out” payments are made pursuant to agreement or established practice and consist of a specified number of hours' pay at the applicable straight time or overtime rates received by an employee on occasions when, after his scheduled hours of work have ended and without prearrangement, he responds to a call from his employer to perform extra work. The amount by which the specified number of hours' pay exceeds the compensation for hours actually worked is considered as a payment that is not made for hours worked. As such, it may be excluded from the computation of the employee's regular rate and cannot be credited toward statutory overtime compensation due the employee. Payments that are prearranged, however, may not be excluded from the regular rate. For example, if an employer retailer called in an employee to help clean up the store for 3 hours after an unexpected roof leak, and then again 3 weeks later for 2 hours to cover for a coworker who left work for a family emergency, payments for those instances would be without prearrangement and any call-back pay that exceeded the amount the employee would receive for the hours worked would be excludable. However, when payments under §§778.221 and 778.222 are prearranged, they are compensation for work. The key inquiry for determining prearrangement is whether the extra work was anticipated and therefore reasonably could have been scheduled. For example, if an employer restaurant anticipates needing extra servers for two hours during the busiest part of each Saturday evening and calls in employees to meet that need instead of scheduling additional servers, that would be prearrangement and any call-back pay would be included in the regular rate.
(b) Application illustrated. The application of the principles in paragraph (a) of this section to call-back payments may be illustrated as follows: An employment agreement provides a minimum of 3 hours' pay at time and one-half for any employee called back to work outside his scheduled hours. The employees covered by the agreement, who are entitled to overtime pay after 40 hours a week, normally work 8 hours each day, Monday through Friday, inclusive, in a workweek beginning on Monday, and are paid overtime compensation at time and one-half for all hours worked in excess of 8 in any day or 40 in any workweek. Assume that an employee covered by this agreement and paid at the rate of $12 an hour works 1 hour overtime or a total of 9 hours on Monday, and works 8 hours each on Tuesday through Friday, inclusive. After he has gone home on Friday evening, he is called back to perform an emergency job. His hours worked on the call total 2 hours and he receives 3 hours' pay at time and one-half, or $54, under the call-back provision, in addition to $480 for working his regular schedule and $18 for overtime worked on Monday evening. In computing overtime compensation due this employee under the Act, the 43 actual hours (not 44) are counted as working time during the week. In addition to $516 pay at the $12 rate for all these hours, he has received under the agreement a premium of $6 for the 1 overtime hour on Monday and of $12 for the 2 hours of overtime work on the call, plus an extra sum of $18 paid by reason of the provision for minimum call-back pay. For purposes of the Act, the extra premiums paid for actual hours of overtime work on Monday and on the Friday call (a total of $18) may be excluded as true overtime premiums in computing his regular rate for the week and may be credited toward compensation due under the Act, but the extra $18 received under the call-back provision is not regarded as paid for hours worked; thus, it may be excluded from the regular rate, but it cannot be credited toward overtime compensation due under the Act. The regular rate of the employee, therefore, remains $12, and he has received an overtime premium of $6 an hour for 3 overtime hours of work. This satisfies the requirements of section 7 of the Act. The same would be true, of course, if in the foregoing example, the employee was called back outside his scheduled hours for the 2-hour emergency job on another night of the week or on Saturday or Sunday, instead of on Friday night.
[33 FR 986, Jan. 26, 1968, as amended at 46 FR 7313, Jan. 23, 1981; 84 FR 68774, Dec. 16, 2019]