alt Hacker NewsWhere I work, in Michigan, people used to be compensated if they were called for on-call work. Then, probably 15 years ago, they decided to give everyone a little raise, based on how much on-call work they did in the previous year, then ended the extra payment for on-call. Anyone who was hired for, or moved into, a position that required on-call work got nothing and continues to get nothing.
I used to get called a lot, when my boss also ran the critical incident team. These days, I don’t get called much, the there is always a looming threat. I miss the days when being done with work meant that I was actually done with work.
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A similar enshittification has happened in my state regarding wages. They slightly increased minimum wage but then stripped out extra pay on Sundays.
It's happening all the time. Lobbied legislators will give some token QoL improvement for the masses and then give the 0.1% a nice big gimme in return.
> Then, probably 15 years ago, they decided to give everyone a little raise, based on how much on-call work they did in the previous year, then ended the extra payment for on-call. Anyone who was hired for, or moved into, a position that required on-call work got nothing and continues to get nothing.
If Alex was previously on-call from time to time and got a raise to account for that typical amount of on-call, it sounds like you think that's fair? (It does sound fair to me.) Then, Bailey is hired at the same exact pay as Alex and also has to occasionally be on-call. Is Bailey truly "getting nothing"? Is Alex's pay fair and Bailey's identical pay unfair? I don't think so.
If you want to pass a law that requires employers to divide up pay differently than they currently do, that's totally fine; in some corner cases, it will result in a net pay increase for lower-paid employees.