Indiana On-Call Laws: Pay Rules, Overtime, and Exemptions

Indiana’s on-call laws don’t come from a single state statute. Whether your employer has to pay you for on-call hours depends on how much the on-call rules restrict what you can do with that time. If you have to stay at the workplace, or stay so close and so ready that you can’t really use the time for yourself, you’re working and you’re owed pay. If you just have to be reachable by phone, you generally aren’t.¹ The minimum wage either way is $7.25 an hour, and overtime kicks in after 40 hours in a workweek.²

Engaged to Wait vs. Waiting to Be Engaged

Federal regulators and the courts sort every on-call situation into one of two buckets.³

Engaged to wait describes time the employer effectively controls. A security guard sitting at a desk between rounds, a firefighter sleeping at the station between alarms, or a nurse told to stay in a break room until the next patient arrives are all engaged to wait. They can’t leave, can’t make real plans, and they get paid for that reason. An employee who must remain on the employer’s premises, or so close that they can’t use the time for personal purposes, is working.¹

Waiting to be engaged looks different. You carry a phone and might get a call, but in the meantime you’re home watching a movie, running errands, or eating dinner with your family. An employee who merely needs to leave word about where they can be reached is not considered to be working while on call.¹ The time is yours, even if a call could come at any moment.

What Pushes On-Call Time Into Paid Territory

Most real disputes sit in the gray zone between those two categories. The Department of Labor evaluates each situation on its own facts rather than applying a fixed numeric cutoff.⁴ A handful of factors show up again and again in on-call cases:

Required response time. A 15- or 20-minute window to reach the worksite tethers you to a tight radius around the job. The shorter the window, the harder it is to argue the time is yours.
Geographic limits. Being told to stay within a certain mileage of the facility, or to remain at home near a landline, is the kind of restriction courts treat as employer control.⁴
How often you actually get called. If you’re pulled in so often that you can’t finish a meal or sleep through a night, the shift starts looking like a regular shift. Courts look at the pattern over time, not a single bad night.
Rules about what you can do. Prohibitions on drinking, requirements to stay in uniform, or orders to stay inside the house all cut against your off-duty freedom.
Trading shifts. If you can swap on-call duty with a coworker, the arrangement is less restrictive. If you’re the only person who can cover, the burden is heavier.

No single factor decides the question. A 30-minute response window with almost no calls might come out unpaid. A 60-minute window with six calls a night might come out paid. The whole picture matters.

Sleep and Meal Time on 24-Hour Shifts

If you work shifts of 24 hours or more — common in healthcare, fire protection, and residential care — your employer may exclude up to eight hours of scheduled sleep from your paid hours, but only if all of these conditions are met:⁵

You and the employer have an express or implied agreement to exclude the sleep period.
The employer provides adequate sleeping facilities.
You can usually get at least five consecutive hours of uninterrupted sleep.

Every interruption during the sleep period counts as hours worked. And if you can’t get at least five hours of sleep, the entire sleep period becomes compensable, not just the interrupted portions.⁵ Without an agreement to exclude sleep time in the first place, every hour counts.

A meal period can also be excluded, but only if it’s long enough that you’re completely relieved of duty. A 20-minute lunch where you’re expected to pick up the phone doesn’t qualify.

Who Doesn’t Get On-Call Pay at All

Workers who are properly classified as exempt under the FLSA’s executive, administrative, or professional categories aren’t entitled to extra pay for on-call hours no matter how restrictive the arrangement. To be exempt, an employee generally has to earn at least $684 per week on a salary basis and meet a duties test for one of these categories.⁶ The duties tests look at what you actually do:⁷

Executive: primary duty is management, you regularly direct at least two full-time workers, and you have real input on hiring and firing.
Administrative: primary duty is office or non-manual work tied to business operations, with independent judgment on significant matters.
Professional: primary duty requires advanced knowledge in a field of science or learning, usually gained through specialized education.
Computer employee: works as a systems analyst, programmer, or software engineer, with a primary duty of systems analysis, program design, or similar technical work.

Job titles don’t settle the question. An “assistant manager” who spends most of the day stocking shelves isn’t exempt just because of the title.⁷ If you’ve been treated as exempt but your actual duties don’t fit, all those unpaid on-call hours could be back wages.

How On-Call Hours Count Toward Overtime

Once on-call hours qualify as compensable, they add to your regular shift hours for the week. Any hour past 40 in a single workweek must be paid at one and a half times your regular hourly rate.⁸

Work 36 regular hours and 10 compensable on-call hours in the same week, and you’re at 46 total. The first 40 are paid at your straight rate; the final 6 are paid at time and a half. At a $20 rate, those six hours pay $30 each.

Indiana does not require daily overtime, and the FLSA does not require extra pay for weekends, holidays, or nights unless those hours push you past 40 for the week.⁹

What You Can Recover for Unpaid On-Call Time

An employer who fails to pay earned wages in Indiana faces real financial exposure. Under Indiana Code 22-2-5-2, an employee can recover the full amount of unpaid wages plus reasonable attorney’s fees and court costs. If the court finds the employer acted in bad faith, it must award liquidated damages of two times the wages owed.¹⁰ That turns $5,000 in back on-call wages into a potential $15,000 recovery.

FLSA penalties can stack on top. Federal law also provides liquidated damages equal to the unpaid wages and allows attorney’s fees. Whether to pursue a state claim, a federal claim, or both usually depends on the facts and whether the violation was willful.

If the employer never tracked your on-call hours, the missing records tend to cut against the employer in a dispute, not against you. Federal law requires covered employers to keep accurate records of daily and weekly hours worked, pay rates, and overtime, with payroll records retained at least three years and supporting documents like time cards kept at least two.¹¹ Indiana also requires employers to give each employee a pay statement every pay period showing hours worked, wages paid, and deductions.¹² If your stub doesn’t show on-call hours or buries them in an unlabeled category, raise it in writing before it grows into a larger problem.

How Long You Have, and How to File

Under the FLSA, you have two years from the date of each violation to file. If the violation was willful, meaning the employer knew about the rule or recklessly disregarded it, the deadline extends to three years.¹³ The clock runs from the date each paycheck should have included the on-call pay, not from the date you figured out the problem. Older pay periods fall out of reach as newer ones remain actionable.

The Indiana Department of Labor’s wage claim process generally expects claims within three years of the date wages were due. File sooner rather than later. Memories fade, records get purged, and employers sometimes close up shop.

To start a wage claim in Indiana, submit the department’s online form with your contact information, the employer’s contact information, the gross amount you believe is owed, your employment dates, the type of claim, and a breakdown of the specific dates and hours at issue. Once accepted, the department contacts the employer, who has two weeks to pay or respond. A final notice gives one more week. If the employer still doesn’t respond, the department sends the file back and recommends consulting an attorney or going to court.¹⁴ The agency tries to mediate; it can’t force payment.

Some claims won’t be accepted. The department won’t process claims for holiday pay, sick pay, bonuses, or severance — only actual hours worked. Claims against bankrupt employers, independent contractor disputes, and claims against the State of Indiana itself are also excluded.¹⁴ You can also file directly with the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division, which enforces the FLSA.

Federal law makes it illegal for an employer to fire or punish you for filing a wage complaint, cooperating with an investigation, or testifying in a related proceeding.¹⁵ A sudden schedule cut, demotion, or termination shortly after you raise an on-call pay issue is the exact pattern the law is designed to catch.

One Thing Indiana Doesn’t Require

Some states require a minimum payment any time an employee is called in and then sent home early. Indiana has no such law, and neither does the FLSA.¹⁶ If you’re called in and sent home after 30 minutes, you’re entitled to pay for those 30 minutes and nothing more. Some employers voluntarily guarantee a few hours of call-in pay through company policy or a union contract, but that’s a contract right, not an Indiana legal requirement.

1
eCFR. 29 CFR 785.17 – On-Call Time
2
U.S. Department of Labor. State Minimum Wage Laws
3
U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 22: Hours Worked Under the Fair Labor Standards Act
4
U.S. Department of Labor. FLSA Hours Worked Advisor
5
eCFR. 29 CFR 785.22 – Duty of 24 Hours or More
6
U.S. Department of Labor. Earnings Thresholds for the Executive, Administrative, and Professional Exemptions
7
U.S. Department of Labor. Exemption for Executive, Administrative, Professional, Computer and Outside Sales Employees Under the Fair Labor Standards Act
8
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 USC 207 – Maximum Hours
9
U.S. Department of Labor. Overtime Pay
10
Indiana General Assembly. Indiana Code 22-2-5-2 – Failure to Pay; Damages; Actions for Recovery
11
U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet: Recordkeeping Requirements Under the Fair Labor Standards Act
12
Indiana General Assembly. Indiana Code Title 22 Labor and Safety 22-2-2-8
13
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 USC 255 – Statute of Limitations
14
Indiana Department of Labor. Online Wage Claim Form
15
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 USC 215 – Prohibited Acts
16
U.S. Department of Labor. Wages and the Fair Labor Standards Act