Writing 'free' for our newspaper... what the hell?!?

No, you don't. You choose to, and you are a sucker who is fucking over your fellow employees and everyone else still in the industry.

Work your hours. Turn them in. Keep careful records. If they give you *any* crap, you own them in a lawsuit.

This is not difficult.

 

Fine, you're not allowed to work over 40 hours. Don't work it. When they ask, tell them you're not allowed to. Keep track of the work you are doing so they can't complain that you're slacking off.

When they try to add extra stuff, ask them which tasks that you are currently doing can wait. Tell them, "I'm doing A, B, C and D. You want me to do E? Then which of the other four tasks do you not want me to do?"

There are plenty of people who worked over 40 hours a week and didn't claim overtime for a lot of years in this business. They were sent to the unemployment line.

 

In my experience, when this boils over and somebody ponies up the insane, unpaid hours they've been working to management, it forces management to do something. Either actually pay out OT or get more hard-core about enforcing the 40-hour work week. For awhile. It inevitably seems to backslide into the "Get these 80 things done in 40 hours, wink-wink" mentality, but there is a general initial scramble among the editors to watch this.

It's illegal for employers to expect an hourly employee to work unpaid hours off the clock. Employers know this. I'm not saying I never did it. I did it all the time because it was not physically possible to do everything I was tasked to do, in a way I could be reasonably satisfied with, in a 40-hour week. And the fact that I couldn't somehow, in my brain, made me a "bad" reporter.

This is illegal bullshit that I suspect management relies on as part of newsroom culture to do "more with less," and I was absolutely wrong to participate in it. Which, admittedly, is easy for me to say now that I've got some distance from it. It's hard, especially with the way things are right now.

Ideally the salaried employees would pick up more of the slack if the 40-hour week was actually enforced, as part of the logic of paying them that way in the first place is that they put in more time than the standard peon. Which is not fair to them, but it's better than any other solution I can see in the current climate.

 

I'll allow that I may not have explained this very well, but that's an awfully naive post.

I mean, yeah, I can technically do that. I can just leave the NCAA Tournament at halftime of a Sweet 16 game because I hit the 40-hour mark and I can tell my bosses I did it because company policy requires me to stop working when I hit 40 hours.

But how do you think that's gonna go for me?

 

Not exactly right, though. Dollar General is facing huge liability for calling their employees "managers" so they can put them on salary without having to pay them overtime. It's illegal.

 

I would say that situation is your fault partially, if your time management is such that you'd hit 40 hours at halftime of such an important game. I don't think anyone is advocating that you keep a running countdown clock in your overcoat and immediately stop working when you hit 40 hours. However, you have to put your foot down at some point - the 38 hour mark, 39, 42, whatever - and not let management keep pushing and pushing.

 

Nobody said you have to strive to win a Pulitzer Prize with your "other duties as needed." Do the penalty kill and hit the bar.

 

Sometimes you just have to stand up and say "NO". People will push you as far as you allow yourself to be pushed.

 

Indeed. While it's not a proper comparison, there were times when I would go to a high school game in the second half if my hours were getting too high.

I've worked unpaid overtime. The first place I worked pretty much insisted upon it by giving me a weekly salary. I was young and didn't fully understand the salary/hourly laws. I got past it by telling them I wasn't available on certain days because I had other plans for that day. They didn't like it, but I'd tell them that since they weren't paying me for that day anyways, I would choose whether or not to work it.

Other places I've worked, there were plenty of times I'd put in 41 or 42 hours and wouldn't claim it. That's because there were other weeks when I'd work 38 or 39 hours because things were a little slow. I understood that.

But when it gets to the point where they expect you to work an excessive amount of overtime (to me, it's more than 2 hours) on a consistent basis (not a once in a while thing) where you don't make up the time during slow periods, then it's time to put your foot down. That may mean finding something else to do during that time (a second job, taking a class, etc.).

In your case, I would have let your boss know in advance that you were going over in hours. Like I said, for a Sweet 16 game, an hour or two isn't that big a deal. Five to 10 hours, you're getting abused.

 

Oh, yeah, I do think that's fine. And frankly, sometimes I'd work that 41-hour week because I stuck around after a meeting to BS with the copy desk, or spent some time fiddling around online rather than finishing my story 20 minutes earlier (one that didn't have to be posted straight to the web, of course!). Not every human being is a productivity machine 24-7. By the same token, sometimes I managed to get all my stuff done and knocked off 10 minutes early.

But when the company is squeezing 45...48...50 hours a week out of you, unpaid, because they're piling on more work than any human being could possibly do in the legally mandated 40-hour week? That's seriously cutting into someone's off work time, and it's probably hurting the product their exhausted ass is putting out anyway.

 

Exactly. Glad to see some others have the same situation. Sports writers work 60-70 get paid for 40. It's the way it is. News writers work 40; paid for 40. Always been that way in our business; always will be. That's why college kids who want to have a "normal" family life in the future should be forewarned. If you are going to cover sports you are going to be bending over a lot.

What I've learned is newspapers get around it by making the employee fill out a time sheet and signing their life away saying they got paid for the hours they worked. Nobody is "forcing" you to lie on there, so the newsppaer is free in court.

 

Exactly. So don't.