> Include on-call time in compensation...

I'm glad you brought this up - there's a quick conclusion to this conversation:

"On-call time compensation is part of your salary."

Yeah, the labor laws are broken.

Salary shouldn't be a thing that a company can ever hide behind.

Labor laws really do need to cover the maximums that an employee can be expected to work. They should also make going above those maximums exponentially more expensive in 'bonus time'; and the accumulation rate shouldn't magically reset after time, but only after time back on normal/reduced work load and duration.

Also, while I'm on this subject, 'full time' work should really begin at more like 24 hours / week. Benefits for part time work should be pro-rated. (It should never be more cost effective to split a full time job in to part time jobs. That is defrauding the economy and making others pay for the costs of your labor.)

That's just fine, as long as on-call expectations are fixed as part of the job offer, just like salary is. If the on-call expectations change for the worse later, that is exactly the same as a salary cut.

IANAL but I believe (in the US or in NYS at least) this would be grounds for quitting with full unemployment coverage (you are not usually eligible for unemployment benefits if you quit, exceptions include the basic nature/hours/wage of the work being changed without your consent, since that is philosophically similar to having your old job terminated and being offered a new, worse one)

Get any on call expectations in writing when taking an offer if you can, just like you'd expect salary in writing

The real problem then is engineers being unwilling to vote with their two feet.

In a market as friendly to software developers as we're currently in, the correct response to that is totally "great, consider this my two week's notice, I'll go to this other company across the road that pays the same salary but doesn't demand I have on-time call".

(No, the response to every problem with your work environment should be to get a new job, nor is that even a realistic possibility for many. The economic argument still stands.)

It's a valid answer provided that on-call was part of the conditions known during hiring and salary negotiations. If we've negotiated a salary of $X for doing Y, but then you suddenly want Y+on-call, then you're going to either pay more or find another employee, because $X is simply too little for that.