alt Hacker News> 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.
Over 15 years it all gets lost. When they made the change, I was on a team that didn’t do on-call, because we were 24x7, so our pay remained the same. Eventually I got a new role, also without on-call. One day the boss thought it would be a good idea if we start doing on-call support. There was no pay adjustment for this, no new job I applied for where on-call was part of the deal I signed up for. It just happened.
It could be called an edge case, but when the on-call pay is built into the base salary, it creates the expectation that a person is never off the clock and no time is truly their own. It also removes the incentive to minimize on-call work.