One way Gannett limits overtime pay expenses is by shifting work to salaried managers -- who don't get OT -- from hourly workers, who ordinarily do receive it. Indeed, a frequent complaint among Gannett Blog readers: Gannett promotes hourly workers to such exempt-from-OT positions, with little change in responsibilities, so the company can get more work from them, without increasing payroll costs.
"The people I feel sorry for,'' Anonymous@11:03 a.m. wrote today, "are the so-called 'exempt' employees who put in a ton more time than they get compensated for."
A federal court lawsuit against a Gannett newspaper in Alabama illustrates this issue. Former Sports Editor David "L.C." Johnson sued The Montgomery Advertiser last October, complaining he was fired for warning Executive Editor Wanda Lloyd that his reporters weren't being paid OT they had earned -- a violation of federal law.
Gannett denies the allegations, and says Johnson was fired for poor performance.
Editor claims 80-hour weeks
Johnson claims he sometimes worked as many as 80 hours a week after his department lost at least two assistant sports editor positions when the newsroom was restructured in 2007. This came with the adoption of the Local Information Center business model.
In her 119-page sworn deposition, Lloyd was questioned on this point by Johnson's attorney, Heather Leonard of Birmingham, Ala. Following is a key passage from Page 59:
Leonard: The sports editor is salaried, correct?
Lloyd: Yes.
Q: So sometimes the sports editor can do a lot of the work that a reporter would do in order to manage time and hours?
A: Yes.
Q: Is it possible that some of the time that Mr. Johnson was working he was actually doing jobs of reporters to help manage that 40 hours?
A: He was doing his job if he was doing that.
Q: But he might be doing duties that could have been assigned to a reporter?
A: That's possible.
Exempt from overtime pay? Please post your experiences in the comments section, below. To e-mail confidentially, write jimhopkins[at]gmail[dot-com]; see Tipsters Anonymous Policy in the rail, upper right.
Saturday, August 14, 2010
How GCI uses salaried workers to limit OT costs; fired sports editor's lawsuit illustrates technique
30 comments:
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I think you will find that a large number of the last round of USCP layoffs was salaried managers. More managers than hourly reporters were laid off. So this latest attempt at manufacturing a Gannett-wide conspiracy to violate overtime laws is Dead On Arrival.
ReplyDeleteGannett eliminated 4,500 newspaper jobs last year, including about 1,400 through layoffs in July 2009 alone. (In total, Gannett cut about 6,200 jobs across all divisions during the year.)
ReplyDeleteI seriously doubt the number of salaried managers cut represented a majority of those 4,500 in USCP.
Even if that were true, how many of their former subordinates were promoted to exempt positions?
If it's true that more salaried managers were laid off, it's because they were really grunt workers masquerading as managers by faux title anyway. Almost everyone I knew in my newsroom was exempt.
ReplyDeleteIn the old days, you had to supervise people and/or have significant control over your department's time management.
I was a copy editor but became exempt almost immediately after Gannett bought my paper. I was given various small weekly sections and declared a section manager and, voila, EXEMPT from overtime! Only, I still had all my usual copy editing work too.
Another trick Gannett used -- after the Bush Labor and Justice departments failed to defend workers and case law established editorial writers as legit exempt -- was add an unheard of staff on the editorial page. There, I was still doing full-time grunt copy editing work, and as Gannett started decimating space and cutting sections, I wrote assigned editorials -- essentially on my own time -- that rarely ran, because the editorial page editor and his one real editor writer were all the real writing staff, with rare exception.
If this suit opens up to class action, I kept my real hours for years hoping for such.
A lawyer in Minnesota that was considering class action a couple of years ago looked at my stuff seriously, but ultimately determined that "editorial writer" claim was a tough and ubiquitous hurdle. At least for those years, I was screwed for the time being, but if this action snowballs the way it really should, to be reasonable to labor, then this would be reopened, I think.
At my site, the only salaried worker who was fired during the July 2009 purge was the publisher. At least three publishers got the axe in Wisconsin and the executive editors were "promoted" to general managers to cover the gap.
ReplyDeleteI can also state as fact that hourly workers at my site work OT and don't get paid for it. Any naysayers to that occuring in Gannett have their heads in the sand.
This strategy is not new. I was promoted to a salaried position about 20 years ago, after regularly working up to 45 hours a week as a copy editor. I occasionally received overtime but more often I had what was called "comp time," which rarely reflected time and a half.
ReplyDeleteAt my old non-Gannett places, it cut both ways to kill the full-time hourly workers:
ReplyDelete1) Salaried town editors, who mostly ran the weekly newspapers, were responsible for doing plenty of reporting in addition to managing and editing. Most worked at least 50 hours a week.
2) Relying a lot on part-time workers, even if it meant bumping them from 20 hours to more than 40 hours. Their hourly rate (10 to 12) was still less than a full-time employee even if they did go over 40 hours.
Anonymous 8/14/2010 12:48 PM said...
ReplyDeleteIf it's true that more salaried managers were laid off, it's because they were really grunt workers masquerading as managers by faux title anyway...
------------
I was one of these. Regularly worked about 65 hours weekly. They gave me a new title on salary with no bump in pay, and cut OT pay.
Oh, for Christ's sake. Stop the whining.
ReplyDeleteEvery worker who takes a salaried job knows exactly what they're getting into. They know upfront it means no OT and plenty of hours over 40. But it also comes with a bigger paycheck. That's the tradeoff, and you can't claim ignorance just because all of a sudden you're being asked to do more.
I was a salaried manager at a small non-Gannett paper in Ohio. I worked 60-70 hours a week, routinely. But I was also making much more money than the people I supervised, so it balanced out.
When I came to Gannett, I was hired as an hourly worker. I turned down two opportunities for a "promotion" to a manager's job because I saw the extreme amount of hours the mid-level managers had to put in - not to do the jobs of those below them, but just to kowtow to the ridiculous and stupid demands of the AME, ME and EE, not to mention the time-consuming paperwork requirements coming down from HR.
I usually come down on the side of the employee. But in this case, the whining is utterly unwarranted. Perhaps Ganett does use the exempt/salaried classification for jobs that it really shouldn't. But every person in those jobs knows what they're getting into when they accept them. There's a tradeoff. Otherwise, there's utterly no benefit to the worker of taking a salaried job.
========
Parenthetical note: At my site during the layoffs, the first round saw zero managers laid off. The second saw just two - both at the rank of ACE. No one higher.
9:38: Sometimes you don't have a choice but to take the 'promotion' and most of the time the pay is not any higher. I know it hasn't been in my case. I've seen many cases at our site where people are just deemed exempt with no change in duties, etc.
ReplyDeleteNice to hear your situation is different, but often times people are put into these situations with little recourse but to quit.
I've been salaried for the last 11 years, and honestly I don't mind. I'm not a coal miner for God's sake.
ReplyDeleteNow furloughs and/or pay cuts? Those I mind.
I disagree with 9:38 a.m. on this" "Perhaps Ganett does use the exempt/salaried classification for jobs that it really shouldn't. But every person in those jobs knows what they're getting into when they accept them."
ReplyDeleteI don't think they all know what's coming, or when the next round of layoffs will force more work onto their backs. It sounds here like a rationale for violating the labor laws. The poster is right in avoiding management roles when such hours are the usual. After all, there's not a lot of work-life balance when most of life is spent going to work.
"Every worker who takes a salaried job knows exactly what they're getting into. They know upfront it means no OT and plenty of hours over 40. But it also comes with a bigger paycheck."
ReplyDelete"I usually come down on the side of the employee. But in this case, the whining is utterly unwarranted. Perhaps Ganett does use the exempt/salaried classification for jobs that it really shouldn't. But every person in those jobs knows what they're getting into when they accept them. There's a tradeoff. Otherwise, there's utterly no benefit to the worker of taking a salaried job."
Here's my experience ( and the experices of my co-workers, as well.) Our IT positions were deemed to be exempt status due to the change in white-collar rules from the DOL (thank you, GWB!) Although, the rules would allow for us to remain hourly. We were not given any salary increase.We were given a one-time bonus based our overtime for the past 12 quarters. For those quarters, we were not allowed to have overtime. (Any OT had to be pre-approved, or if there had been an emergency, we were to take one-to-one comp time that same pay period. The only OT we got was when we were forced to deal with a situation at the end of a pay period when there was not enough time to recoup through comp-time.) Most bonuses were given at a floor management had set. Suffice it to say, the bonus was not spectacular. We were given no choice and no recourse but to quit. Half the staff has jumped ship in the past year.
My stance is, I make what they paid me for 40 hours. So, 40 hours is what they get now.
I was an "exempt" reporter at a midwestern paper for about 15 years. I had no supervisory duties at all. I was relentlessly hounded on weekends and nights and called in from vacations because of OT restrictions on the metro desk. Then we were told there was no such thing as comp time to offset the extra hours we worked. To my knowledge, the practice is still going on at that property.
ReplyDeleteI know of a few people at one Gannett property who were promoted from the hourly ranks into supervisory jobs last year and who got no pay bump -- they were told it was because of the newspaper-wide pay freeze. So they've worked 50-60 hrs a week for no additional money for almost a year now, but plenty of additional stress. (So I guess it evens out.)
ReplyDeleteOfficially, there's no such thing as comp time, but unless your boss is a moron, he or she knows to quietly give someone who has, for example, worked more than five days in a single week a comp day later. Bosses who don't take care of their line supervisors will find they in turn aren't taken care of by their line supervisors.
ReplyDeleteThere are legal standards for what it takes for a job to be properly classified as "exempt". Either Gannett is properly applying those standards or they aren't.
ReplyDeleteI can certainly imagine the pressure of the last few years to try to fudge those standards. It often takes a class-action suit or a state or federal Dept of Labor action to get them addressed if fudging of classifications has happened in a broad way.
See job duties standards here:
http://www.flsa.com/coverage.html
When I was hired into management (after a decade at different Gannett papers), I was told: "Be prepared for 60-hour weeks. That is what is expected of managers. If you are so efficient that your hours fall below that, you will be given additional duties." This manager was later promoted.
ReplyDeleteI don't suppose you got a 50 percent raise when you were hired into management?
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteAs a former manager who worked tons of hours (in a position where the asst. editor slot also disappeared) I feel for the guy who was canned. Its a no win situation when you are handling copy, going to meetings and doing the job of two by yourself. I don't know if Wanda Lloyd is all that believable. But after reading through her 119 page deposition, this guy did enough to himself to get fired. Again, I'm not shilling for the company. But he misused a company credit card, had a verbal altercation with a co-worked in which he threatened him with a baseball bat, made a coarse comment to a female colleague and also angered a reader. Forget about not making meetings and fleshing out faux budgetlines. He did enough to lose the job on his own w/o concocting a storyline that he was fired for siding with workers.
ReplyDeleteHe carries a lot of baggage to his case. That's one reaso why I'm more interested in what's really a side issue: OT, and testimony from witnesses other than Johnson.
ReplyDeleteAt the Tennessean in Nashville, they took the IT department and made them salaried with no change in pay, gave a little bonus based on prior OT, but funny thing is that for the last few years there was a standing order of NO OVERTIME. So everybody essentially received a tiny baseline bonus. Now all of a sudden there is so much to do that now requires overtime, that didn't before. It's a huge crock of crap. I'm so glad I left that crap hole of a job. The only thing I miss about that place is the good people I worked with, sadly they are still there and I feel for them. Ethically everybody is getting screwed with a hammer, but one place that Gannet doesn't skimp on is all the attorney's that let them know how to do it legally with no recourse.
ReplyDelete@ 8/15/2010 9:38 AM ---
ReplyDelete8/14/2010 9:09 PM here. Who was whining? How about you take your own advice and shut the fuck up, read comprehensively and maybe learn something?
"Who was whining?" Are you serious? Pick a time, any time, and you'll find a whiner.
ReplyDelete9:38's quote: "They know upfront it means no OT and plenty of hours over 40. But it also comes with a bigger paycheck. That's the tradeoff"
ReplyDeleteAt the property I worked at, there was no bigger paycheck if someone had a management position created for them. Maybe management would kick in an extra $10 or $20 per week. Considering the extra hours that they put in, it *might* have come to an extra dollar per hour.
Sounds like some of us need to look up some labor lawyers. A few years ago, an overworked staff member at my site went to the law and walked home with several thousand dollars and left. Acts that come with cost consequences make management behave better.
ReplyDeleteI was hired into an exempt position at the Montgomery Advertiser and quickly realized that I had no supervisory responsibilities but was expected to work a minimum 50 hours per week. My salary was not higher than the hourly workers. In fact, it was probably lower than many because they were eligible for overtime.
ReplyDeleteIt was well known at that paper that many hourly employees were working well over 40 hours per week -- especially in the sports department -- and were not reporting it on their time cards. However, upper management made it clear that if you work overtime, you report it. The problem was that in many cases it was impossible to do everything that was expected of you in 40 hours, especially in the sports department.
LC was a terrible editor. He did himself no favors. But the culture at the Advertiser was such that many exempt employees worked 60, 70, 80-hour weeks to compensate for the severe lack of manpower in the newsroom. (Meanwhile, Wanda Lloyd is absent from the newsroom at least six weeks per year.) I am surprise no one has yet had a nervous breakdown there.
Just look at the time logs from the proximity cards used to enter the building each day and compare this data to payroll hours. Exempt employees spend way more than 40 hours a week. It'd be tough for editorial since they're out most of the time. But, for exempt managers it'll show a nice pattern of excess.
ReplyDeleteGannett actually violates the individual Labor Laws of 13 states in which they operate newspapers by having their DSM staff as salaried. They follow the FLSA which states that "Anyone engaged in the act of delivering a newspaper is exempt from overtime", which is ambiguous at best. However, these 13 states (54 newspaper sites including USA Today locations) have individual Labor Laws thjat provide overtime for these positions as they do not fit the criteria for other exemptions (Executive, Administrative, Managerial, etc).It also clearly states on the US DOL website that an employer must adhere to the labor laws which are to a "greater benefit to the employee", which means regardless of Federal or State laws, whichever one provides better coverage and compensation for the employee is the one that must be followed. Gannett is violating the laws of the following states: CA, CO, IN, MD, MI, MN, MO, NV, NJ, NY, OH, OR, WI. Any DSM's at any of the newspapers in any of these states should look into protecting their rights and getting paid for the back compensation they are due before Gannett ends up going bankrupt and they cannot claim and collect anything. Contact an attorney immediately!
ReplyDeleteExcellent points. Thank you.
Delete