Arkansas Democrat-Gazette: Anybody want to work just 32 hours per week?

I remember a guy who worked part time at our shop who, by God, was only working what he was paid for. He wasn't "all in" when it came to a long-term newspaper career, so the tease of advancement didn't grab him. Eventually he got tired of getting 50 hours of work on his plate for 32 hours pay, and started leaving things half-finished, deadline or otherwise, to make the point. Once left a prep football game in the 2nd quarter because his clock time hit 32 for the week. I'm sure at a lot of shops he'd have been fired in a blink, but at ours people just dealt with it, in part because his duties (preps, minor league hockey, etc.) weren't high enough on the ladder to cause much stir when things didn't get done. He moved on eventually.

 

This is the scary line. It says employees' requests to go back to 40-hour weeks will be CONSIDERED, not granted automatically. If a paper can get by doing this now, why bump it back up later. It sounds like once you choose to do this, they very well might not let you go back.

 

That was the part that got me too. Of course, the out is "once business has improved and is back to normal levels." It ain't ever going back to "normal" levels, and the suits know it.

 

It’s true the paper could just turn to layoffs, but they’re not doing anybody any favors by making this voluntary. When very few people decide to take a cut, they will lay people off and say, “We gave you an option to cut hours but no one took advantage, so now we’re laying people off.”

 

Me too. You could crank out about 6 credits a semester. Get that teaching degree or something.

 

i've been hearing this week about more Gannett Papers in our region (Southwest, South) of the country getting ready to have certain employees take "furloughs." anybody else hear this?

 

I just posted a link.

http://www.sportsjournalists.com/forum/threads/65812/

Here's some food for thought. If you drop to 32-hours per week, that would hurt any eventual unemployment benefits you might get.

 

Really?

 

a 32-hour week would be heaven for me. granted, i put it on myself to put in the time for our small daily, what with such a small staff (two of us), but my weekly log is easily 50-60. again, i can't complain because some of it i do to hell-bent stay up with things or, believe it or not, even try and get ahead.

 

I do, unless I'm getting paid for the overtime.

As I told a editor at a paper I worked at years ago, if you want me to work 50 hours, I have no problem doing it. But I expect to be paid for it. I even calculated the amount of money that I would lose by working for free (something like $7,000 per year).

 

I say it all the time: When some of the things newspapers do happens in other industries (such as trying to guilt people into working 50 hours and being paid for 40), editors and managers salivate over the chance to report the hell out of it.

It's a different story when newspapers do it to their employees, isn't it?

(And yes, I'm talking about one of the subplots of this thread, not the main piece of news)

 

Actually, no need to modify anything---once you work 30 hours or more a week, you are entitled to fulltime benefits, period.