California has a special rule for "ambulance drivers and attendants" who work 24-hours shifts. If certain conditions are met, the rule permits employers to schedule ambulance drivers and attendants to work 24 hours without paying daily overtime pay. The California daily overtime rule states:
"The daily overtime provision of subsection (A) above shall not apply to ambulance drivers and attendants scheduled for 24-hour shifts of duty who have agreed in writing to exclude from daily time worked not more than three (3) meal periods of not more than one (1) hour each and a regularly scheduled uninterrupted sleeping period of not more than eight (8) hours. The employer shall provide adequate dormitory and kitchen facilities for employees on such a schedule.
Under the rule, the employee need only be paid for 13 hours if all the conditions are met, i.e., not more than 3 hours of meal periods which are no longer than 1 hour each, and a regularly scheduled uninterrupted sleep period of not more than 8 hours, and a written agreement to the same. This applies to California daily overtime (for more than 8 hours a work day) and not California weekly overtime (for more than 40 hours a work week)."
To get the benefits of this rule, employers must comply with all the requirements of the 24-hour shift rule. For example, if the sleep time is "on call" instead of scheduled to be uninterrupted, then the employer is not in compliance. If the employee has not made a written agreement, then the employer is not in compliance. In such cases, the employer will be required to pay its employees daily overtime for its 24-hour shift.
A case illustrating how an employer failed to comply with the 24-hour shift rule is Aguilar v. Association for Retarded Citizens. In Aguilar, the employer scheduled employees to work 24-hour shifts, but "temporarily released them" several hours each day to allow them to pursue their personal matters. In other words, they did not work a real 24-hour shift. The court held the employer had to pay the employees for all hours worked, including overtime pay. The court reasoned:
First, the IWC Wage Order clearly distinguishes between employees who work 24-hour shifts and those who work less than 24-hour shifts. The Wage Order expressly provides an exemption from compensation for sleep time only for employees who work 24-hour shifts. The record is clear the employees here do not work 24-hour shifts.
Second, we do not find ARC's characterization of the shifts as being 24-hour shifts with the employees being 'temporar[ily] release[d]...to attend to personal interests' to be persuasive. ARC's characterization would abrogate the distinction between employees working 24-hour shifts and those working less than 24-hour shifts. Under ARC's analysis, all employees in the work force could be characterized as working 24-hour shifts, with the only variation being the length of the 'temporary release...to attend to personal interests.' An accountant who worked 8 hours a day could be viewed as working a 24-hour shift with a 16-hour temporary release period.
ARC's interpretation requires a non commonsense interpretation of the words; if IWC had intended the interpretation that ARC urges -- that employers do not have to compensate employees working 17-hour shifts for sleep time -- IWC easily could have so provided. They, however, did not. We conclude the employees here are entitled to compensation for all the hours worked; ARC is not entitled to deduct those hours when it allows the employees to sleep.
There are a lot of nuances to the 24-hour shift rule, so no case can be considered a "slam dunk" without reasoned analysis. For example, as far as I can tell, there is no California authority describing "ambulance drivers and attendants". The federal law uses the terms "ambulance service personnel", and this is pretty easy to understand. However, whether the term "attendant" includes paramedics and EMT's remains to be seen.
