Fact Check: On-Call Pay Rules: When Standby Time Is Compensable

Skidmore v. Swift & Co., 323 U.S. 134, 137 (1944), holds that "no principle of law" can be precisely formulated; the inquiry is fact-specific and considers "all the circumstances." 29 CFR §785.17 operationalizes the doctrine for on-call duty.

Reporter cite 60 Cal.4th 833 confirmed. Parallel cites 340 P.3d 355, 182 Cal.Rptr.3d 124 also confirmed. Holding rejects federal §785.22 sleep-time deduction for California state-law claims. Decided January 8, 2015. Final and not on appeal.

328 U.S. 680, 687 (1946). Holding still controlling notwithstanding the Portal-to-Portal Act's narrowing of the integral-and-indispensable scope; the burden-shifting framework survived as to claims within FLSA coverage.

Final disposition January 8, 2015. Both holdings (compensability of all on-call hours under Wage Order 4 § 2(K); inapplicability of §785.22) confirmed in the opinion text.

Facts confirmed against opinion text at 323 U.S. 134, 135-136. Court explicitly notes Skidmore plus six co-workers, daytime work, three-to-four nights on-premises overnight, beds and recreational facilities, response to alarms.

323 U.S. 134, 137 (1944). The Court declines to set out a per-se rule and remands for fact-finding.

Reporter cite 323 U.S. 126 (1944) confirmed. Decided same day as Skidmore (December 11, 1944). Facts: Armour's plant fire brigade. Same totality analysis.

Reporter cite 30 F.3d 1174 confirmed. Opinion text confirms 15-minute response window (not the 30 minutes formerly cited in some secondary sources). Ninth Circuit reversed district court's contrary finding.

Facts at 60 Cal.4th 833, 837-839. Schedule and residency requirements confirmed against opinion text.

Reporter cite 5 Cal.5th 829 confirmed. Holding: California law does not adopt federal de minimis doctrine for the specific Starbucks closing-task fact pattern; statute and Wage Order do not permit employers to require off-the-clock work as a regular feature of the job.

Reporter cite 31 Cal.App.5th 1167 confirmed. Court of Appeal, Second Appellate District. California Supreme Court denied review (June 12, 2019). Binding in 2nd District; persuasive across California.

Reporter cite 577 U.S. 442 (2016) confirmed. Decided March 22, 2016. Holding: representative evidence (employee statistical sampling) is permissible in FLSA collective actions when the employer's records are inadequate, drawing on the Mt. Clemens framework.

Section text confirmed verbatim against Cornell LII.

§785.22(a) sets the four conditions; §785.22(b) sets the 5-hour interruption rule. Both subsections confirmed verbatim.

§778.208 distinguishes discretionary from non-discretionary bonuses; an announced-in-advance on-call stipend falls under the non-discretionary branch. §778.209 specifies the apportionment method.

§216(b) provides for liquidated damages equal to the unpaid wages. The "willful" qualifier in the claim is loose — willfulness is the §255(a) statute-of-limitations trigger, not the §216(b) liquidated-damages trigger. Under §216(b), liquidated damages are owed in addition to unpaid wages unless the employer satisfies the good-faith defense in §260, which is independent of willfulness. The claim conflates two FLSA mechanics. Research body softens the framing in step 3 of the remediation playbook, which separately captures the §216(b) and §255(a) mechanics correctly.

Verbatim block-quote matches Cornell LII text word-for-word.

Verbatim block-quote includes both the "completely relieved from duty" sentence and the "definitely told in advance" sentence. Both confirmed against Cornell LII.

Verbatim quote of operative rule + telephone-operator example. Confirmed against Cornell LII.

§207(j) text and §778.601(b) implementing regulation both confirmed.

Table 1 (firefighters) and Table 2 (law enforcement) at 29 CFR §553.230 confirmed. Full table runs from 7 days through 28 days; research body shows endpoints + ellipsis for the intervening rows.

§778.419(a) requires the employee to have agreed to the alternative method "in advance of the performance of the work."

Each Wage Order Section 2 includes a "hours worked" definition with the "subject to control" language. Confirmed against multiple Wage Order PDFs at DIR.

Wage Order 4-2001 Section 2(K) defines "hours worked." Mendiola applied Wage Order 4. Security guards typically fall under Wage Order 4 unless covered by Wage Order 5 (public housekeeping) or similar.

§510(a) confirmed verbatim. The 1.5× / 2× / 7th-day structure is as claimed.

Wage Order 4-2001 Section 5 confirms half-day-pay floor with 2-4 hour minimum/maximum bounds.

12 NYCRR §142-2.1(b) defines "hours worked" with the "required to be available" language. Confirmed against NYS DOL Wage Order PDFs.

c.149 §150 treble-damages provision (mandatory for unpaid wages claims) confirmed. 940 CMR 27.04 reporting-time pay confirmed at AG regulations.

N.J.A.C. 12:56-5.7 captures the federal §785.17 framework in NJ-specific language. NJ wage-and-hour generally federal-floor on on-call.

IL Minimum Wage Law confirmed at the ILGA URL. The specific cite "56 Ill. Adm. Code 210.110" is the IL DOL's interpretive regulation. The regulation references the federal §785.17 framework but does not adopt the federal CFR by reference. Practitioner commentary treats IL on-call analysis as federal-floor; no IL Supreme Court decision has displaced this. The "follows federal" framing is accurate at the operational level.

PA Minimum Wage Act of 1968 confirmed. 34 Pa. Code Chapter 231 contains the PMWA implementing regulations. On-call treatment is federal-floor per PA Department of Labor & Industry guidance; PA Supreme Court has not displaced the federal framework. The claim that the framework "tracks federal §785.16/§785.17 closely" is accurate at the operational level; the regulation does not directly incorporate the CFR by reference.

7 CCR 1103-1 COMPS Order Rule 1.9 defines "time worked" / "hours worked." 2020 revision (COMPS Order #36, effective January 1, 2020) broadened the framework.

MN Stat. §177.23 (FLSA definitions) confirmed. Minn. Rules 5200.0120 is the MN DLI definitions rule. On-call treatment is federal-floor per DLI guidance. Research body says "federal-floor framework" which is accurate at the operational level; the rules do not directly incorporate the CFR by reference.

Conn. Gen. Stat. §31-58 definitions confirmed at the Chapter 558 (Wages) URL. Conn. Agencies Regs. §31-60-10 covers hours worked rules. CT follows federal on on-call per DOL guidance. The "federal-floor framework" framing is accurate at the operational level.

Section D2 and E2 of Connecticut's reporting-time regulations correctly differentiate mercantile (4-hour) and non-mercantile (2-hour) industries. Practitioner commentary confirms.

OR has no general statutory reporting-time pay requirement; OAR 839-020-0042 covers a narrow minor (under-18) provision. Research body framing is correct but tight; readers should know that OR generally has no reporting-time pay rule.

R.I. Gen. Laws § 28-12-3.2 confirms 3-hour minimum for non-exempt employees scheduled but not put to work.

§553.215(a) requires EMS personnel to perform their EMS duties as part of fire or police activity to qualify for the §7(k) exemption. Confirmed against Cornell LII.

Wage Order 16-2001 confirmed at DIR. Reporting-time and call-back provisions per Section 5.

California Business and Professions Code §17200 (UCL) permits a 4-year limitations period via the borrowing rule for wage-and-hour claims brought as UCL claims, per Cortez v. Purolator Air Filtration Products, 23 Cal.4th 163 (2000). Confirmed.

Settlement-amount ranges in the wake of Mendiola are documented in practitioner commentary (Seyfarth, Jackson Lewis, Littler client alerts) but not consolidated in any single Tier-1 source. The qualitative claim is well-supported; the specific dollar ranges are practitioner-aggregated. Research body uses the loose "low-single-digit to eight-figure" framing rather than naming a specific case-settlement amount.

Trend reported across Seyfarth, Littler, Jackson Lewis, Ogletree client alerts and the ABA Section of Labor and Employment Law's 2024-2026 publications. No single Tier-1 source aggregates the wave. Qualitative claim is well-supported; the "surged" framing is practitioner consensus.

Decision is appellate-final (no further appellate history).

Docket S206874 confirmed; filing date January 8, 2015. Final and not subject to further review.

California Supreme Court denied review June 12, 2019 (docket S254675). Court of Appeal decision (Second Appellate District) is final and binding within the 2nd District; persuasive across California.

29 CFR Part 552 confirmed. Home Care Ass'n of Am. v. Weil, 799 F.3d 1084 (D.C. Cir. 2015) confirmed at the cite. Effective date of the amendment after the court vacatur and remand is January 1, 2015 (per DOL final rule).

TWC guidance is interpretive (Tier-2-equivalent agency guidance), but Texas has no contrary state-law expansion, so the operational framing is consistent with the underlying federal Tier-1 sources.

ACGME (Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education) duty-hour rules are voluntary accreditation standards, not FLSA-equivalent regulations. The claim that they "do not federalize compensability" is accurate. The framing is summary-level; deeper engagement with ACGME standards (which set 80-hour-per-week and 28-hour-shift caps for residents) would require additional citation. Operationally accurate.

This is a well-established choice-of-law principle in wage-and-hour litigation: the state where the work is performed controls the state-law claim. Practitioner commentary universal; no single Tier-1 source codifies the principle (it's derived from each state's wage-and-hour statute scope). The framing is correct.

This trend is well-documented in practitioner commentary but no single Tier-1 source consolidates it. The operational claim is accurate; the precision of "routine" is practitioner-aggregated.

DOL Fact Sheet #22 confirmed as current. §785.17 text has not been amended (Federal Register search through May 2026 returns no §785.17 rulemaking activity).