[IronJack]

When you figure that for your on-call stretch, you're on the company's clock 24X7 with no pay, it starts making your compensation look pretty McPoor. Instead of a standard 2000-hour year, if you work one week on-call every month, that's 2 24-hour days of unpaid labor plus 5 16-hour days, for a total of 1536 hours every year you work for nothing. Now divide your salary by 2000 (your standard work year) + 1536 (your giveaway time) and see how much you're making per hour.

Why that is not illegal is beyond me.

[tbw2]

I am not on call all the time, but have sometimes taken shifts of being on call.

At least for me, being a parent allowed me to say “no” to on call expectations in IT. Not responding to a call because I was at the grocery store was a point of contention. Not responding to a call because my son landed in the ER, we debated the lack of hand-off processes he had because they just scheduled me for that holiday week, no one was answering the phone when I said I can’t do this, and kids can get sick over Christmas break.
But it does mess things up to say “I can’t leave the house”, since I don’t want to take devices with me on the road or to others’ homes.