[Code of Federal Regulations]
[Title 5, Volume 1, Parts 1 to 699]
[Revised as of January 1, 2001]
From the U.S. Government Printing Office via GPO Access
[CITE: 5CFR550.143]

[Page 501]
 
                    TITLE 5--ADMINISTRATIVE PERSONNEL
 
                CHAPTER I--OFFICE OF PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT
 
PART 550--PAY ADMINISTRATION (GENERAL)--Table of Contents
 
                         Subpart A--Premium Pay
 
Sec. 550.143  Bases for determining positions for which premium pay under Sec. 550.141 is authorized.

    (a) The requirement for the type of position referred to in 
Sec. 550.141 that an employee regularly remain at, or within the 
confines of, his station must meet all the following conditions:
    (1) The requirement must be definite and the employee must be 
officially ordered to remain at his station. The employee's remaining at 
his station must not be merely voluntary, desirable, or a result of 
geographic isolation, or solely because the employee lives on the 
grounds.
    (2) The hours during which the requirement is operative must be 
included in the employee's tour of duty. This tour of duty must be 
established on a regularly recurring basis over a substantial period of 
time, generally at least a few months. The requirement must not be 
occasional, irregular, or for a brief period.
    (3) The requirement must be associated with the regularly assigned 
duties of the employee's job, either as a continuation of his regular 
work which includes standby time, or as a requirement to stand by at his 
post to perform his regularly assigned duties if the necessity arises.
    (b) The words ``at, or within the confines, of his station'', in 
Sec. 550.141 mean one of the following:
    (1) At an employee's regular duty station.
    (2) In quarters provided by an agency, which are not the employee's 
ordinary living quarters, and which are specifically provided for use of 
personnel required to stand by in readiness to perform actual work when 
the need arises or when called.
    (3) In an employee's living quarters, when designated by the agency 
as his duty station and when his whereabouts is narrowly limited and his 
activities are substantially restricted. This condition exists only 
during periods when an employee is required to remain at his quarters 
and is required to hold himself in a state of readiness to answer calls 
for his services. This limitation on an employee's whereabouts and 
activities is distinguished from the limitation placed on an employee 
who is subject to call outside his tour of duty but may leave his 
quarters provided he arranges for someone else to respond to calls or 
leaves a telephone number by which he can be reached should his services 
be required.
    (c) The words ``longer than ordinary periods of duty'' in 
Sec. 550.141 mean more than 40 hours a week.
    (d) The words ``a substantial part of which consists of remaining in 
a standby status rather than performing work'' in Sec. 550.141 refer to 
the entire tour of duty. This requirement is met:
    (1) When a substantial part of the entire tour of duty, at least 25 
percent, is spent in a standby status which occurs throughout the entire 
tour;
    (2) If certain hours of the tour of duty are regularly devoted to 
actual work and others are spent in a standby status, that part of the 
tour of duty devoted to standing by is at least 25 percent of the entire 
tour of duty; or
    (3) When an employee has a basic workweek requiring full-time 
performance of actual work and is required, in addition, to perform 
standby duty on certain nights, or to perform standby duty on certain 
days not included in his basic workweek.
    (e) An employee is in a standby status, as referred to in 
Sec. 550.141, only at times when he is not required to perform actual 
work and is free to eat, sleep, read, listen to the radio, or engage in 
other similar pursuits. An employee is performing actual work, rather 
than being in a standby status, when his full attention is devoted to 
his work, even though the nature of his work does not require constant 
activity (for example, a guard on duty at his post and a technician 
continuously observing instruments are engaged in the actual work of 
their positions). Actual work includes both work performed during 
regular work periods and work performed when called out during periods 
ordinarily spent in a standby status.