TV folks expect pay for OT, sue

This is fascinating. You know what I like? Not being taken advantage of. Can't believe how many people on this board put up with the bad hours, bad pay and bad situations. I feel as if no one stands up for themselves.

 

First two jobs I had, at chains of twice-a-week papers in the Chicago 'burbs, used the classic "comp time" gambit as a way to avoid paying OT.

"Fill out your time sheet for 80 hours every two weeks, and if your work over that, use those hours as comp time the next pay period."

Sounds great in theory ... until everyone tries to use their comp time on Friday.

It didn't take long until there were specific times you could "comp out" (say, Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday morning), and after a while, most people didn't bother. But they still wrote 80 hours down each pay period.

 

The amount of money you'd be making if they'd pay you the overtime better be considerably less than the money you'd make by advancing. Otherwise, why bother?

Or, as I posted on here a long time ago, let's assume for a moment someone like you made $12 an hour. OT is $18 an hour. Five hours a week is $90, multiplied by 50 weeks (assuming 2 weeks of vacation) is $4,500 per year.

And now you're saying your overtime is at least tripled, which means you're giving up at least $13,500 per year, if not more. Is the job you're aspiring to advance to going to pay you more than that?

 

You'd think with all the layoffs over the last 10 years or so that newspapers wouldn't try to screw people over about overtime. There's no way paying OT comes anywhere close to the salaries and benefits they're saving by having a work force reduced anywhere from a third to one half.

 

It sounds like there are enough people willing to work for free that the newspapers don't have to worry about it.

 

Place an anonymous call to the Wage and Hour Board to have them investigate.

 

My old paper had paper-and-pen time cards when I started in '04. I guess someone complained somewhere in the chain. We got a computerized system a few years later. I never worked more than 40 hours as a copy editor, sports reporter, or a crime reporter. Now that my life is where it is, I'm really glad I didn't allow the company to take advantage of me. It would have been all for nothing. I don't know of anyone who left that place and made much more than a lateral move. Most just leave the business, period.

 

Also illegal, by the way. Or, at very least, legal under very strict circumstances.

 

The problem is that most of the managers, or at least the shitty ones, take it extremely personal when you tell them you aren't working uncompensated overtime.

That's where you get the newsroom tension. Sometimes it is because they have bonuses tied to keeping overtime down or sometimes it is because they have a boss and his or her bonus is tied to low overtime but in the cases involving me or people I know, it is because the managers are just shitty people.

They didn't get overtime when they were hourly at their various stops and they think not paying overtime is part of "paying your dues" whatever the fuck that means.

But if you work at a place that has laid people off and you aren't claiming overtime, all that means is the bosses see you can do more with less and they double down on layoffs, or cuts, or furloughs or whatever.

You're only screwing yourself. And if you aren't at least asking or demanding it, then you get what you deserve.

 

Complete bullshit.

I was told that at a couple different papers, and after working 55-65 hours a week all school year long, the first week in June I turned in a 35-hour work week, the bitch M.E. turned the fucking office upside down to dig up shit for me to do -- type up community calendar items, cover Saturday morning dog shows, etc etc. yadda yadda.


Somebody told me recently that more people graduate from U.S. universities every single year with journalism degrees than there are total editorial positions in newspapers and magazines in the entire country.

Think about that -- every single print newsroom in the nation could fire its complete staff every year and replace them all with journalism degree holders -- and never have to rehire anybody from the pool of employees already fired.

THAT'S why companies pull this shit, and get away with it, and will continue to.

 

You just gotta find the right job. I had one where, if you didn't count time surfing the internet (which I would have been doing at home anyway), I barely put in 20 some weeks during the summer.