Restoration & disaster response
Water mitigation & restoration technicians: unpaid on-call time
The short answer
If your restoration employer requires you to stay within a set drive time of the shop, answer within a fixed window, and keep a loaded truck ready, your entire on-call rotation is very likely compensable “hours worked” under 29 C.F.R. § 785.17 — not just the minutes you spend extracting water. In California the standard is stricter still: employer control alone makes the time payable under Mendiola v. CPS Security Solutions, 60 Cal. 4th 833 (2015).
The fact pattern in water damage work
Mitigation is a 24-hour trade. A typical rotation asks a technician to carry the emergency phone for a full week, stay inside a 30- to 60-minute radius of the warehouse, keep the box truck stocked and fueled, stay sober, and roll on the first call. Employers frequently pay only from the moment the tech reaches the loss site, treating the rest as unpaid availability.
Federal law does not accept that framing. Under 29 C.F.R. § 785.17 an employee who is “engaged to wait” is working, and the Supreme Court has held that time spent in readiness to serve may itself be the thing the employer hired: Armour & Co. v. Wantock, 323 U.S. 126 (1944); Skidmore v. Swift & Co., 323 U.S. 134 (1944).
What decides a restoration on-call case
The Ninth Circuit's framework in Owens v. Local No. 169, 971 F.2d 347 (9th Cir. 1992), weighs the geographic limit, the required response time, how often calls come in, whether the worker can trade the shift, and how much the rotation interferes with ordinary life. A short response window combined with a heavy call volume is the combination that most often makes the whole shift compensable, as in Renfro v. City of Emporia, 948 F.2d 1529 (10th Cir. 1991).
By contrast, where a technician only had to carry a pager and could move freely, courts have found the standby time non-compensable: Bright v. Houston Northwest Medical Center, 934 F.2d 671 (5th Cir. 1991). The facts, not the job title, decide it — which is why your dispatch records matter more than your employer's policy language under 29 C.F.R. § 516.2.
What the hours are worth
Unpaid on-call hours that push you past 40 in a workweek are owed at one and one-half times your regular rate under 29 U.S.C. § 207(a), and the regular rate includes non-discretionary bonuses and on-call stipends under 29 U.S.C. § 207(e). Unpaid overtime is generally doubled as liquidated damages under 29 U.S.C. § 216(b), with a two-year lookback that extends to three years for willful violations under 29 U.S.C. § 255(a).
Restoration workers have recovered as a group: in Rodriguez v. BELFOR USA Group, Inc., No. 5:22-cv-02071 (N.D. Cal.), the court granted final approval on October 9, 2025 to a reported settlement of more than $1.6 million covering more than 600 disaster-restoration workers. Nationally, the Wage and Hour Division recovered $184,425,856 in FLSA back wages in fiscal year 2025.
Evidence to save now
Save the on-call schedule, the dispatch app history, text and call logs, truck GPS or fuel records, and the written policy stating your response radius. Where an employer failed to keep the records the FLSA requires under 29 U.S.C. § 211(c), workers may prove hours with representative evidence: Tyson Foods, Inc. v. Bouaphakeo, 577 U.S. 442 (2016).
California adds paper of its own. Itemized wage statements are required under Cal. Lab. Code § 226, and unpaid wages at separation trigger waiting-time penalties of up to 30 days' pay under Cal. Lab. Code § 203.
Facts that usually decide these cases
- A mandatory 30–60 minute radius from the warehouse
- A fixed response window measured in minutes
- Weekly rotations with frequent night and weekend callouts
- A required take-home truck kept loaded and fueled
Weighed together under the framework of Owens v. Local No. 169, 971 F.2d 347 (9th Cir. 1992): Geographic restriction — how far you may travel while on call; Response time — how many minutes you have to answer or arrive; Call frequency — how often the phone actually rings; Personal interference — what the rotation stops you from doing; Trade or refusal rights — whether you can hand the shift off.
Frequently asked questions
- Do I get paid for the whole on-call week or only the jobs?
- If the restrictions are severe enough that you cannot use the time effectively for your own purposes, the entire on-call period is compensable under 29 C.F.R. § 785.17 — not only the dispatched jobs. If the restrictions are light, only the actual call-out time is paid, and travel to an emergency job is generally compensable under 29 C.F.R. § 785.36.
- My employer pays a flat $100 on-call stipend. Is that enough?
- A stipend does not by itself satisfy the law: if the standby hours are hours worked, they must be paid at least minimum wage and counted toward overtime under 29 U.S.C. § 207(a), and the stipend itself generally raises your regular rate under 29 U.S.C. § 207(e). In California, on-call hours under employer control must be paid at the applicable rate under IWC Wage Order 4-2001 § 2(K) and Cal. Lab. Code § 510.
Keep reading
Check your on-call case in three minutes.
Nine questions. We score your facts against the five factors courts weigh and estimate what your unpaid standby hours are worth.