Not getting paid for OT - legal?

The whole issue of overtime can be a trap.

Either you work overtime and don't get paid for it, or you stop working when you hit 40 hours and then are questioned why you didn't get your work done.

 

Why would you work for free?

 

Yes, but there's a pretty simple answer to that question. And the onus is on your employer there, not on you.

 

In my state, journalists are non-exempt, and the law stipulates that you can't be made salaried unless you supervise two people. One of my former papers got nailed for this. It refused to pay a bunch of OT and an employee turned it into the state department of labor. The paper, IIRC, paid a significant fine plus all the back overtime it owed to every one of its employees.

Nonetheless, this is a harrowing path to follow for an employee. That same paper, I left without being paid for overtime because I believed I'd be blackballed if I turned them in. Looking back, I wish I had.

All that said, this is not a 40-hour-a-week job. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Just do what you can to make sure you're not abused.

 

I don't know about that. Travel counts as work. You name one beat writer for a paper that travels that isn't going to work 30 hours in a Friday-Sunday period when that period involves traveling Friday and Sunday with the game Saturday? If it's a baseball beat writer with all those games? Newspapers are getting away with murder.

 

The past two sports departments I've worked in basically go by "days" rather than hours. You have a claim for OT of some form -- cash or comp time -- if you work six or seven days. But not so much for an extra hour here, an extra hour there on a normally scheduled work day.

Everyone just assumes you will be working a lot of days of eight, nine or 10 hours, a few days of seven and that those won't exactly even out. But there always is some consideration, down to informal comp deal between supervisor and staffer, when people started logging weeks of six (48 hr+) or seven (56 hr+) days.

A couple of places I worked previously, hell, all we did was work (lots of morning-night split shifts) and hit the bars afterward, day in and day out. But we were snot-noses, didn't know better and were better off for doing it.