The Clerks Award doesn’t provide an allowance or any other provisions for on-call work.

How an employee who is covered by the Clerks Award is paid when they’re on call will depend on the facts of each case.

An employee is paid for all time worked. Set out below are some of the ways that employees who are sometimes required to be on call are paid for work performed while they’re on call.

Employees and employers may wish to seek independent advice on their own situation, and on options that may be available to them.

Minimum payment for casual employees

Casual employees are paid for a minimum of 3 hours each time they start work, even if they’re rostered for less than 3 hours.

If a casual employee is on call they must be paid for a minimum of 3 hours from the time they commence work. If they don’t do any work while they’re on call, the minimum engagement period won’t start and they’re not required to be paid.

Example

Eda is a casual telephone receptionist for a company that offers 24/7 assistance to customers.

Eda is occasionally asked to work on call from home. When she’s not taking a call, she’s not required to do any work.

Eda was on call on Thursday night. She took 3 calls, at 10.30pm, 12.30am and 3am.

Taking a call triggered the 3-hour minimum payment period. The period started at 10.30pm.

The first and second calls were completed before the end of the 3-hour period.

The third call Eda took was outside the first payment period. This meant that a second 3-hour minimum payment period was triggered.

Both periods of work were outside the spread of ordinary hours, meaning Eda will be paid the overtime rate for 6 hours’ work for Thursday night.

Return to duty

Employees who are required to return to work after their usual finishing time are paid for a minimum of 3 hours at the overtime rate. A return to duty isn’t part of a full-time or part-time employee’s regular pattern of work hours.

Example

Elsie is a part-time logistics and rostering co-ordinator. She’s covered by the Clerks Award.

Elsie’s ordinary hours finished at 4.30pm. Elsie is the on-call rostering person and is required to log back into the remote network if a rostering issue comes up.

At 7.30pm her manager asked her to log in when the rostering system crashed. It took Elsie 2 hours to update the rosters.

Because Elsie was required to return to duty while on call she must be paid for a minimum of 3 hours at the overtime rate.

Individual flexibility arrangements

An individual flexibility arrangement can’t be used to reduce an employee’s minimum payment or engagement period under the Award.

For example, this means that an employer couldn’t use a flexibility arrangement to pay a casual employee for only the time actually spent working when they’re required to work during an on-call period.