Zoo Wage Theft?

Location: Indiana

I am using a friend's reddit account to avoid this getting back to me in case my employer goes looking.

I work as a zookeeper at a zoo in Indiana. This past week (1/24-1/27) I was part of the emergency staffing team during the large snow event we just had. Our manager reached out to our team on Thursday and I volunteered to be part of the emergency staff. In past years, including the last overnight I did, the zoo got rooms for the employees who are going to stay at a hotel that is less than 1 mile away. Since we were required to stay at the hotel and could not go home, in previous years we were paid for our regular shifts and all the time at the hotel, minus 8 hours of sleep time. There is a policy that all of the zoo staff signed last year that outlines this.

However, this year, on Saturday morning, we were told that we were only going to be paid for the hours that we were actually at the zoo, and the policy from last year was no longer applicable and HR was in the process of writing a new policy. This was a huge departure from the past and all of the keeper staff was very surprised and upset because we assumed we would be getting paid for 16 hours/day. For most of us, the overtime was the biggest reason we had volunteered to stay. I spoke with my manager over the phone and was told that I would be subject to disciplinary action if I decided to go home and not stay because I had already volunteered to be emergency staff.

Keeper staff went to management who went to HR to try to fight for more pay and HR ended up deciding to give us 3 hours of overtime for each overnight. This still left us short 5 hours/day. The emergency staff ended up staying Saturday night, Sunday night, and Monday night. I went to work at 7:30am on Saturday and was not able to go home until 5:30pm on Tuesday.

My question is, do we have a right to be paid for those 5 hours? When reading through the Indiana labor laws, it seems like we meet the qualifications to be considered on duty since we were not allowed to go home and were expected to sleep at the hotel and report to work the following day. Is this wage theft? What are my options?

The zoo is backpedaling hard today and is trying to say that "we were never required to stay at the hotel" even though that was all of the keepers and managers understanding. This seems like they are trying to cover for themselves. I've been trying to get a paper trail going but my management is refusing to answer my emails and will only communicate with me verbally. I've been sending follow up emails after each verbal conversation to try to compensate.

Any advice or help would be appreciated.