38 U.S.C. § 7457 — On-call pay

(a) The Secretary can pay an employee covered by this section for time spent on scheduled on-call duty — but not for any time the employee is actually called back in to work, which gets paid separately. (b) This applies only to an employee who meets three conditions: the employee works in one of the job positions listed elsewhere in the law, or meets specific criteria for health-care personnel described in another section; the employee's work unit is one where on-call premium pay is allowed; and the employee is officially scheduled to be on call outside regular hours or on a federal holiday. (c) There's a protection for employees who were already getting a different kind of extra pay — "standby premium pay" under title 5 — as of May 20, 1988. As long as that employee stays in the same job and work unit and would still qualify for that old standby pay, the employee gets paid at whichever is higher: the old standby-pay rate the employee would have gotten if not scheduled on-call, or the on-call pay rate this section provides.