Former Tampa Trib sports writer suing Media General

Well, that's ridiculous. I haven't heard that one at my shop Jake. I work a great deal from home because I can and because I tend to write better here than I do in the office where the phones are always ringing and people are always bugging you.

 

Except he's going to have to account for all the hours in any +40-hour weeks or +8-hour days that took place in a stretch of 32 months. Maybe he can find people who can vouch for small chunks of it here and there, but how do you account for, say, 60 hours of work in a week? Expense accounts wouldn't denote how much time he worked, just that he did work on the road. And he signed a 40-hour timecard, so even if he could prove all the hours worked, they'd either claim the timecard was right and he acknowledged it with his signature, or that he was complicit in working unpaid hours by knowingly signing a card that doesn't properly represent the work performed.

So the case turns on whether he can prove the overtime was mandated and not paid. That's tricky. He can point to the general culture (the Media General culture, if you will) and that'll help his cause ... to a degree. But even if you can build a case that MG routinely forces employees to perform uncompensated work (which is a lot harder to do in a court of law than around the water cooler), he'd still have to prove specific circumstances where he was told to underreport the hours worked, either overtly or indirectly (a threat to be removed from the beat for not doing the job in the hours allotted, for example).

He's fighting the good fight (again, assuming the accusations are true as delineated in the suit), but it doesn't sound like he has a lot of arrows in his quiver.

 

Oh, I agree. I'm glad it hasn't spread to your office yet. THe publishers in the NOVA cluster are freaking out about it, but there was also some abuse of snow days in Manassas, I believe. The stupid thing is, right before the first blizzard in December they were proud to show us that our computer desktops could be accessed remotely. If needed, I can layout pages, access the wire and all that from my couch. A little more than a month later they are saying don't log on remotely unless you have permission, which has been next to impossible to get this week.

 

Glad that he's picking the fight, but the time to pick it is *before* the hours are worked.

 

At my last MG stop, we got dockable laptops to replace the Tandy 1000s we were using. The IT guy who trained us actually encouraged me to do layout from home, because I was the most computer savvy of our smaller, older newscloset. But the publisher didn't like it because I suppose he was worried I'd abuse the privilege of working from home on layout day (I already did most of my non-layout work from home or the field, then went to the office once a week to put it on the pages). Of course, I was salaried, so why that was an issue, I don't know. But MG is good about updating technology, then making you feel guilty for using it.

 

Most newspapers are in complete violation of every labor law out there.

Find me a professional or college beat writer who works 40 hours a week during the season. I would guess that most work between 60-80 depending on how you count travel. I guarantee you, none of them get the overtime they would at a normal job if they logged that number of hours.

Comp time is illegal. During my 13 years in the business, I had to turn in timecard after timecard that said I was working 40 hours when everybody in the office knew I was off. I also had to turn in timecard after timecard that said I was working 40 hours during the season when I was working much more than that.

The only exceptions are those who are on straight salary, which is fairly rare in the newspaper business, unless you're a columnist.

 

If you think they're stiffing you, alternate pay records must be kept. If you were told to turn in time cards that had 40 hours per week, and worked overtime, there has to be something you've kept parallel to that time to document it. That said, I hope he nails their ass but good.

 

During my tenure as an SE in the MG about 10 years ago, I was told by my boss not to let anybody go over 40. Only when a school was competing for a state championship or the minor league baseball team was in the playoffs was OT allowed. One savvy writer (who was eventually let go for other reasons) managed to get me on a busy week. He convinced me to let him go to a Duke practice the day before the game with UNC, he then when to Duke-UNC. When Friday rolled around and he was supposed to cover his prep team, he said "sorry my 40 hours are up," and walked out the door. Learned that lesson the hard way. :

When crunch time came for his career a couple years later, that incident didn't help.

 

This will come down to Brett McMurphy being able to prove that sports editors or bosses forced him to work more than 40 hours in any given week and that is going to be near impossible.

 

I have seen this in action.

Some beat writers just don't want any help on their beats, either because they want to be seen as the top dog or don't want to give up any crumbs or feel like if they ask for or accept help it will be seen as some kind of weakness.

Those folks tend to burn out so you sometimes have to force help on them.

Others can get browbeaten by editors. What do you mean you can't cover the scrimmage on Saturday? How many hours did you work Wednesday when all you did was that notes column?

That's a tough situation.

 

Exactly - if you are a beat reporter, bosses offer you days off during the season but you probably don't take them because most beat reporters are territorial and like the comp days that come with working straight through a season. That isn't a newspapers issue

 

Comp days aren't legal except if offered in the same week.