My old company used to have you be "available" to fly...ie you aren't off-duty, not on-duty nor standby as these annoying things have to comply with duty regs... So we ended up hanging around "in limbo" ready to fly with 2 hours notice for weeks on end. The company also got so desperate they told you to count days you didnt fly as days off.
Our so called "safety audit manager" did sod all as he didnt want to lose a comfy salary in a required position with a JAR-OPS 1 AOC company.