Standing by

The Manufacturing Award includes a payment for standing by. This applies where an employee is required regularly to stand by in readiness to work after their ordinary hours have finished. The employee gets paid standing by time at their ordinary hourly rate for the time they are standing by.

This payment doesn’t apply if there’s a ‘custom prevailing’ at the workplace for employees to regularly be standing by.

‘Custom prevailing’ means that standing by is a routine, regular and expected part of the work.

Example

Clive maintains and repairs equipment at his workplace. Along with the other equipment repair technicians, he finishes his shift at 4pm.

Clive’s employer keeps a roster of technicians standing by from 4pm until 6pm. This is to ensure there’s always one technician standing by during these hours. Clive is normally rostered to be standing by on Mondays and Thursdays, following the end of his normal shift.

Since standing by is a normal part of this work, Clive doesn’t get paid standing by time.

When Clive is called in for a repair job, he’s paid for a call back, which is a minimum of 4 hours’ pay at overtime rates.

Call backs

Employees are paid for a call back if they’re required to come in to work after leaving. See Payment for call backs in the Manufacturing Award for more information.

When is returning to work not a call back under the Award?

The call back entitlements in the Manufacturing Award won’t apply if it’s customary for an employee to return to work for a specific job outside ordinary hours. For vehicle manufacturing employees, the task must also take less than 30 minutes to complete.

When they return for a specific job, employees are paid as follows:

• Vehicle manufacturing employees are paid 1 hour of the appropriate overtime rate
• All other employees get paid overtime for the time it takes to complete the job.

Example - all other employees

Jeremy is a day worker who finishes work at 4pm.

Each evening he returns to work at 8pm to switch off a generator. It takes him 30 minutes.

As it’s customary for Jeremy to return to the workplace to do this job, he isn’t paid for a call back.

He gets paid overtime for the 30 minutes it takes to finish the job.

The standing by provisions also don’t apply to Jeremy because he isn’t required to be on stand by.

References

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