A method for wireless communication at a user equipment (UE) includes transmitting a scheduling request (SR) transmission in a radio frequency spectrum band on at least one resource of a contention-based physical uplink shared channel (PUSCH), and monitoring the radio frequency spectrum band for a response to the SR transmission. A method for wireless communication at a network access device includes receiving, from a UE, a SR transmission in a radio frequency spectrum band on at least one resource of a contention-based PUSCH; determining an availability of uplink resources allocable to the UE; selecting, based at least in part on the determined availability of uplink resources, the response to the SR transmission; and transmitting in the radio frequency spectrum band, to the UE, the selected response to the SR transmission. The response to the SR transmission includes an uplink grant or an acknowledgement of the SR transmission.