Given that he says emergencies are really rare, any reason he wouldn't be willing to pay for the overtime? It shouldn't cost him much.

Are you certain your employment contract doesn't say "reasonable overtime". Those clauses are not rare.

@DaveG so far that if system present failures its always a lack of testing, however this specific case presented due to an external service provider

@GregoryCurrie at least on the section corresponding to work hour agreement it doesn't state it, but I will recheck just to be sure

@DaveG I suspect the overtime isn't the issue, it's the need to basically always be available no matter what time of day. It means certain activities are no longer possible in your life, for example, playing sport.

"saying I'm supposed to come up with something and that I was handling this unprofessionally" - there is nothing unprofessional about the message you are sending, which is that you don't intend to be available 24/7/365 when you were hired for something quite different. Don't let such talk intimidate you. You can perhaps find more effective words to deliver the same firm message.

There's no such thing as "fair". There's what is legal and what is illegal. Is it legal for them to require this of you and your team? If it is legal then you don't really have much choice in the matter. You can acquiesce or you can leave. Unfortunately I don't see any alternatives.

Just be careful when you quote the contract, it's fine to say you only work 9-6 because that's what they pay you for, but be prepared for them to say you must keep working the whole time minus an hour for lunch(?), no chat's with your buddy getting coffee, no personal phone calls, ... because that's what they pay you for

Trying to get free work out of employees is wage theft, and you can report it, and that wage theft is FAR more unprofessional than what he is accusing you of.

Does your company sell support services? If so, and there is a 24/7 “premium” package your boss is defrauding your customers by not actually having the infrastructure in place to provide what has been sold. If you don’t currently sell this service then it’s an opportunity to do so and use it to fund the extra hours and allowances that will need to be paid to those on-call.

Where you are? France is quite different from US and has nothing in common if we talk about e.g. Ukraine.

Usually a Service Level Agreement should be in place between your employer and the client, which should stipulate things like response times, if workarounds (e.g. scripts or database cleanups) are acceptable as interim stopgaps, etc. I've worked in a domain where big sums were transferred, unfortunately fixes sometimes take time and new releases were thoroughly acceptance tested by client before going live. As per @Darren's comment, often in exchange for some recurring fee. If there is already something in place, you might mention it in the question.

@fraxinus: I was about to ask the same. In France, there is legal provision for the time you spend being ready to intervene (astreinte), and then the time you actually work when there is a case. Then there is the "all hands on deck" when there is an emergency which is handled through more or less informal ways. Anything that is documented must follow the law, though.

The person who negotiates the contract should review the stated support hours with the client. If the client wants to pay for out-of-hours support, that can be an upsell. There is the boss' money to pay staff.

Not an answer, but to address the pay side of it, since it sounds like that might be a sticking point, can you offer time off in lieu for any call outs? Maybe 1.5x TOIL because of being woken up at 1am, and not getting a good night's sleep that night.

One thing to remember is that unless people are being paid commensurately to be on-call, and thus take it seriously as part of their duties to be available to resume work, then they're very likely to be unavailable when an emergency actually does arise. It could be as simple as falling asleep in a different room to the phone, or one's wife or partner moving or turning off the phone without realising. If a person is not being paid to treat their evening and weekend time somewhat like working time, then it won't be, and the resilience will be totally illusory.

To me, the worst thing here is that the manager heard someone say "Your employees didn't wake up in the middle of the night to help us!" and he didn't have your back. My manager used to describe his job as a profession "BS umbrella" where he shielded us from all the goings-on and politics so we could get work done. Find yourself a manager who will go to bat for you!!

Further to Darren's Comment, I once worked for a well-respected brand that offered telephone support 8am-8pm, but outside 9-5 had only one guy on duty. Everyone was saddened by that, but the company insisted its promise was met.

Which country? Are you salary or hourly?

This is my personal way to deal with it. I work at few companies where management disguise on-call by calling it "dev honor, duties, whatever" without any remuneration. Those talk are often bad if you alone to opposed it and rarely backfire if you say nothing and you do not pick up the phone. 1) people who want to climb the corporate ladder will answer the call; 2) nobody answer the call, then it will bring back to the negotiation table where the boss will realize people will not do it without any remuneration; You may get cold shoulder from the management the next day but it usually pass.