Screamin' A. gets whacked

On what basis? I just don't see what legal ground he has to stand on, not that I'm an expert.

 

set the pipe down.

 

If Smith wins anything for a wrongful "demotion," then he'll be doing a service for any of us who has been reassigned against our wishes to what we perceive as a lesser duty. Across the board, editors have been allowed to do that, both at union and non-union shops, as long as they don't try to zap your pay. They claim first that there is no tangible difference between being a reporter and being a columnist, and then say that they have to power to tell employees what roles to fill.

If the "job abandonment" is what he fights, I would think the editors would have created paperwork showing how many hours Smith has logged in the past six months.

So I don't see how he can win, unless the Inky gets so squeamish about him shouting about the race card, it settles just to make him go away.

 

Philly should have fired him six months ago... But since they didn't want to pay him a severance, they tried to embarrass him into quitting...

Do I feel sorry for SAS? Not for a second... But the paper handled it badly...

 

If that were true, then why have the different roles?

Because it's not true. There is a difference.

Screamin's situation was handled badly by both parties.

 

Think you're missing the point. Of course the roles are different. But editors frequently have argued successfully that being a columnist is not a promotion, and going from colunmnist to reporter is not a demotion. They base it on strict terms of employment, i.e., the department you work in and whether your salary goes down when you go "backward."

Remember, we're talking about legal rights and liabilities here. People get columns taken away all the time and never manage to sue over it. SAS wasn't terminated unlawfully when this all started -- he was told he would again be a reporter and no longer write columns. That is his editors' right.

Don't know enough about the "abandonment" part to know how that was tracked, or what the legal ramifications are.

But you're kidding yourself if you think that, once you get a column, you're tenured in and safe from a change in editors or an editors' change of heart.

 

or maybe they were trying to avoid a fucking lawsuit.

maybe they didn't handle it perfectly, but jesus christ, the guy's fucked-up personality probably played a huge role in their decision-making.

 

WHAT DO YOU MEAN I ABANDONED MY JOB! QUITE FRANKLY IVE BEEN STUCK IN AN NBA THEMED RV WITH WALTON AND VAN GUNDY!

 

Mr. Smith needs to "man up" and move on from a place he clearly isn't wanted, all due to his conduct and performance. Running to assemble a "team of lawyers" is crap.

 

They can move someone around, yank whatever column beat and tell you it's all the same. I'm not dumb enough to think having a column or specific beat means you're "tenured" because you're not.

Legally, the editor's decisions hold up. But realistically and in the court of public-peer perception, if a well-known columnist is stripped and given a general assignment position or something else it's considered a demotion.

If a college beat writer is removed and put on preps, it's considered a demotion. That has been debated here before.

Management can do what it wants, though. Philly should have done something sooner, like fire SAS four months ago, after it was clear he wasn't returning.

 

imagine getting whacked for doing a piss poor job and generally not giving a shit.

 

buh, buh, it's not his fault ...

I'm sure he'll play the race card in 5, 4, 3 ...