Employer Claims That After Hours Work Was De Minimis But I’m Seeing Conflicting Rules For What Constitutes As De Minimis.

Location: Kentucky

Where I work, we have an “on-call” phone that rotates from employee to employee in my department on a regular schedule. As far as anybody is aware, we are expected to answer this phone when it rings for work business. When we get a call out, the policy is that we get a minimum of 2 hours time and a half pay. If it is longer than 2nhours to complete the job, we get paid for however long it takes. So, 30 minute call out pays 2 hours. 1.5 hour call out pays 2 hours. 4 hour call out pays 4 hours.

The issue is that I was called on my day off on the on-call phone for a work related matter (it’s a utility and a customer called about a main break outside of our district. I told the dispatcher that that wasn’t our district and that was that. All in all, probably a 2 minute call (I can find the call log on the phone and see exactly when and for how long it was).

I also received another call on my personal phone from a coworker asking about how to read a new water meter we have. Again, short. 5 minutes or less. I can also find this phone call in my call log.

Separately, I wouldn’t have ever thought of it. But, being called with dumb questions during my time off got under my skin so I decided to claim 2 2-hour call outs.

The company came back and said that they couldn’t pay me for those as I didn’t really do anything. I said that I’m pretty sure the law requires they pay me. Then they spoke with their lawyer who claimed it was a de minimis job and they didn’t have to pay. So it was dropped.

Since then, the idea of “the company doing wrong” has been a very big topic whenever the head boss can find an opportunity to fit it in and it’s got me a little keyed up since he keeps bringing it up.

I wasn’t able to find anything concrete, but I asked Gemini (I know, I know) and it mentioned something along the lines of “being expected to answer the phone defeats any de minimis claim”. So I looked up the specific law it was referencing (803 KAR 1:065) and it wasn’t exactly clear either way. It also says it “expired”(? Not sure if that means the page itself or the law itself).

Can anybody clarify my rights in this situation? At this point, it’s less about the 4 hours of over time and more about “if you don’t wanna drop it, I won’t either”, but I don’t wanna make a fool of myself over this.