California Private Ambulance Regulations

julie

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I work at a small private ambulance company in California. Most of the calls we do are a mix of interfacility transfers, hospital discharges, and SNF's or assisted living emergency calls. We also do a lot of RNCCT calls as well, but we don't run a 911 area, and aren't utilized publically.

Lately I've suspected that the company I work with has been infringing on our rights as employees, and breaking state payroll laws. However, I've found it extremely hard to research and find California Ambulance regulations in terms of the rights of employees.

Does anyone know of any website or resource I could use to find out answers? As an employee group, we're totally in the dark, or just apathetic. I know our overtime rates are slightly different since we're regulated by the DOT, but I cannot find clear cut answers.
 
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julie

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Haha, no, not in SD. I'm sure there are private ambulance companies all over california that try to get around labor laws, so I'm hoping someone has a success story and can point me in the right direction.

Mostly, for our 24-hour shifts, we're compensated only 21 hours of straight (not-overtime) pay, the idea being we waive our 3 hour meal break times. But still, aren't we supposed to be paid overtime after 8, or at least 12 hours of continual work?
 

socalmedic

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no. if you are working 24 hour shifts you only get paid 1.5ot after 40 hours in one week.
 

firecoins

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ot comes after working 40 hours.
 

Akulahawk

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In the absence of a valid, collective bargaining agreement, there's a Industrial Work Order that does cover ambulance transport. It's been about 10 years since I've looked at/for it, but there is one in effect.
 

looker

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Company can either pay you overtime after 8 hours or after 40 a week. That is the company choice. Generally it's 40 hours a week after which you will get overtime. So basically the company is not violating any rules. Also, employer is not required to pay for your "sleeping" time.
 

Akulahawk

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The last time I checked, a company can pay you 13 hours/24 hour shift... if they take you out of service for "lunch" for breakfast/lunch/dinner... and the unpaid sleeptime. And that 13 hours is all that counts towards your 40. At least during sleeptime, if you get a call, you're paid... I think OT... but it's been a LONG time since I've even read the applicable Work Order...

OUCH!
 
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Sandog

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The last time I checked, a company can pay you 13 hours/24 hour shift... if they take you out of service for "lunch" for breakfast/lunch/dinner... and the unpaid sleeptime. And that 13 hours is all that counts towards your 40. At least during sleeptime, if you get a call, you're paid... I think OT... but it's been a LONG time since I've even read the applicable Work Order...

OUCH!

Just to back up what you said. I found this.

Source: http://www.harriskaufman.com/overtime-emts-paramedics.htm

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.
 

mrhunt

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Sooooooo...........The 8 hour rest period HAS to be un-interrupted?

so if you get a 911 call's throughout the night and have to run them, thats interupted and hence have to be compensated the full 24? Or how does that work?
 

Jim37F

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Without having read thru the rest of the 8 year old thread,

I can say that at my previous private ambulance job in LA (McCormick Ambulance), they paid us only 22 hours. I believe the rule was something like 5 uninterrupted hours of sleep between 11 and 7 or something like that, but if you ran a call that interrupted that 5 hours, yes you'd get paid the full 24.

How much of those were internal rules, and how much of that was dictated by state law, couldn't tell ya.
 

RocketMedic

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You know, a lot of liability and heartache could be avoided by paying straight time...
 

Akulahawk

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Without having read thru the rest of the 8 year old thread,

I can say that at my previous private ambulance job in LA (McCormick Ambulance), they paid us only 22 hours. I believe the rule was something like 5 uninterrupted hours of sleep between 11 and 7 or something like that, but if you ran a call that interrupted that 5 hours, yes you'd get paid the full 24.

How much of those were internal rules, and how much of that was dictated by state law, couldn't tell ya.
If they were paying for 22 of 24 hours, then they were officially taking you out of service for two 1 hour meal breaks and paying for 1 and keeping you "on call" during that 1 hour meal break. The rest was internal. They don't have to pay for three 1 hour meal breaks and they don't have to pay for a regularly scheduled sleep period. They cannot move the start/end time of that sleep period around. That makes for a 13 paid/24 hour shift. If you get paid more hours than that, that's great. Where they will try to short you is not paying you appropriately for missed meals and for actual time worked during the regularly scheduled sleep period.

Here's parts of the Work Order (IWC article 9):
employees shall not be employed more than eight (8) hours in any workday or more than 40 hours in any workweek unless the employee
receives one and one-half (1 1/2 ) times such employee’s regular rate of pay for all hours worked over 40 hours in the workweek.

Eight (8) hours of labor constitutes a day’s work. Employment beyond eight (8) hours in any workday or more than six (6) days in any
workweek is permissible provided the employee is compensated for such overtime at not less than:
(a) One and one-half (1 1/2) times the employee’s regular rate of pay for all hours worked in excess of eight (8) hours up
to and including 12 hours in any workday, and for the first eight (8) hours worked on the seventh (7th) consecutive day of work in a
workweek; and
(b) Double the employee’s regular rate of pay for all hours worked in excess of 12 hours in any workday and for all hours
worked in excess of eight (8) hours on the seventh (7th) consecutive day of work in a workweek

This applies to "ambulance drivers and attendants" in that it impacts daily overtime... note the very specific language.
(K) 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.
Now then, there's a court case that's at the California Supreme Court, going through pre-hearing stuff, that potentially could radically change all of this because generally employees that are in "sleep time" could be considered "on-call" and are subject to employer control. There's an earlier case involving security guards under IWC order #4 that probably sparked this... Looking ahead, if the California Supreme Court determines that all time spent at work is compensable, then you can wave 24 hour shifts goodbye.

Also do NOT forget that a lot of the wage/hour provisions in an Industrial Work Order can be modified by valid collective bargaining agreements and when those are in place, both sides must follow that agreement.
 

hometownmedic5

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It’s illegal in Ma to play these games with wages. We get paid bell to bell, 1.5 over 40, no meal breaks to worry over and we get paid to sleep. We don’t get paid more to do calls and less to sleep, we’re just paid.

In a former imprecation of my current employer, they tried to play those games. This goes back about thirty years. Somebody sued, it became a class action and my company paid out a fortune in back wages to make up for all the time they stole.

I have never, and would seriously struggle with the decision to, work for an employer that is unwilling to pay for properly. It’s painfully simple. If I am not free to do as I please, then I am on the clock and need to be paid accordingly. Why people in this day and age put up with this is beyond me. I get that one person cant fight city hall, so I’m not singling any of you out at individuals. What I’m saying is I don’t know why the lot of us are standing idly by why our employers are proving us. Obviously, this extends beyond the topic immediately at hand, so I’ll leave it there before we get a “stay on topic” nastygram, but you get my point I hope.
 
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