Former Tampa Trib sports writer suing Media General

Ace is correct about comp days.

And I'm not so sure these newspaper execs are all that confident about their ability to defend a claim like this. I have a friend who sued a former employer over a different matter, and he told me when he said in his deposition that he had worked a whole lot of unpaid overtime and had charted his real hours to back it up (and rattled off a few examples), the paper's lawyer stopped in his tracks and turned kind of pale. They wound up settling that case.

Edit: Now that I think about it, he might have also had an affidavit from another former writer at that paper saying that writer, too, had worked a ton of unpaid overtime and had been told by the bosses to do the work but not to put overtime on the time card.

 

This could settle. I doubt they want the wage and hour folks to come by.

 

Brett's a good guy and I'm pulling for him. I hope he wins all the overtime I didn't get paid for, too.

 

newspaper publishers could fuck up a two-car funeral, you really think they're gonna hire competent tax lawyers to defend this suit?

 

Yep. Don't be stupid. Most billion dollar companies have lots of competent people. Tax lawyers included and if they don't, it is called outside counsel.

Without knowing how they handle travel time and pay, and assuming that they pay for travel time, it wouldn't be very hard to put together something that documents how much time worked without using a time sheet.
Mileage forms and expense sheets are your friend here.
If your time sheet shows you didn't work Friday, but that was your travel day and you get paid for travel, then that would show a false time card/sheet was turned in.
You could argue that it was company policy not to turn that time in. Same thing for travel back.
Travel time adds up quickly, if you include time in the air, time at the airport, time in the rental car and on and on.

I don't think this guy can win, but I think he can settle for a large chunk of money and get on with his life.

 

I'd be curious to see how it'd play in court (I agree it'd be hard - but not impossible - for him to prove it). I suspect if he got some folks from the sports department who'd worked with him to testify, not just about specific hours but about the general practice, he'd have a shot. Whether he can account for every hour is one thing. But this practice is sickeningly common, it is illegal, and I'd bet a week's salary it still goes on in a wink-wink-nudge-nudge fashion at this ex-paper. That's a world of labor law hurt for an employer, whether they end up having to pay this guy out everything he wants or not.

If there's a betting pool, mine's on the paper pushing to settle as well.

 

I think he would have a hard time finding current employees to back him in court, if you know what I mean.

 

This could settle. I doubt they want the wage and hour folks to come by.
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This is the real issue here from the management standpoint. They know what they're doing is illegal, but they also know that as long as nobody squawks, there won't be anybody from the government asking questions. That's what they're really afraid of, the wage and hour people interviewing employees, current and former.

That said, I'm a college beat writer and while I don't get overtime and know I'm not fairly compensated (overtime issue notwithstanding), the fact I don't have to do a whole lot in the offseason because of this remains a pretty attractive perk for me. I think if our company was forced to start compensating people lawfully, I'd probably have to come in and do nothing five days a week over the summer, which I'm not sure I want to do.

 

Thought it was in the same pay period.

 

That could be true. Not sure exactly. If you get paid every two weeks but turn in a time card every week, how does that work?

 

When I covered colleges, I thought the same thing. Then all our veterans took all their vacation time in the summer and I was on the desk four night a week anyway.

I would love to know how much money I left on the table following their BS no-overtime rule while also demanding that I work harder than the competition. Meanwhile, everyone outside of sports rolls their eyes because, hey, we get to cover games for a living and isn't that, you know, worth it?

Worth what, missing my kids' soccer games and dance recitals and not getting paid for it?

 

Maybe someone in management was stupid enough to leave an e-paper trail of e-mails or he could have been sneaky and recorded phone conversations asking about his schedule (not likely, but possible I guess). This could really blow up, though, because as everyone has said, the next paper that shows me its entire newsroom is operating 100 percent under labor law guidelines will be the first.