In Ward v. Tilly’s, the Court revised a dismissal of plaintiff’s case concerning on-call shifts and reporting time pay.  The court noted the basic concept of on-call scheduling: Employees are assigned on-call shifts, but are not told until they call in two hours before their shifts start whether they should actually come in to work.  If they are told to come in, they are paid for the shifts; if not, they do not receive any compensation for having been “on call.”  Plaintiff argued that this violated California’s wage order No. 7-2001, which requires employers to pay employees “reporting time pay” for each workday “an employee is required to report for work and does report, but is not put to work or is furnished less than half said employee’s usual or scheduled day’s work.”  Plaintiff contended that when on-call employees contact Tilly’s two hours before on-call shifts, they were “report[ing] for work” within the meaning of the wage order, and thus were owed reporting time pay.  The company argued that employees “report for work” only by physically appearing at the work site at the start of a scheduled shift, and thus that employees who call in and are told not to come to work are not owed reporting time pay.  The Court of Appeal concluded that the on-call scheduling triggered Wage Order 7’s reporting time pay requirements.  It held that these on-call shifts burden employees, who cannot take other jobs, go to school, or make social plans during on-call shifts—but who nonetheless receive no compensation from unless they ultimately are called in to work.  The Court stated this is precisely the kind of abuse that reporting time pay was designed to discourage.

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