Perhaps it’s just a coincidence, but not long after this blog reminded Guild bargaining-unit members how much turnaround pay they could earn from working weekend late night police shifts — and just one day after our newsletter repeated that reminder — the Journal Sentinel has changed the hours of those shifts.
Our contract requires overtime pay whenever the regularly scheduled end of one shift and the start of the next are less than 10 hours apart (or, if a day off intervenes, 34 hours). After the company dismissed two weekend night police reporters, in what management called an economic downsizing, the Guild pointed out that other local news reporters who rotate through the 4:30 p.m.-to-1:30 a.m. Saturday and Sunday shifts would be eligible for overtime if they were required to start any earlier than 11:30 a.m. the next Monday. (For example, starting at 9 a.m. Monday would result in 2.5 hours of OT.)
Right after that, newsroom managers realized it no longer made sense to keep people around until 1:30 a.m., based on how late we can get stories into the paper. They changed the shift to a 3:30 p.m.-to-12:30 a.m. schedule.
That means the earliest those reporters can come in without being paid for a short turnaround is 10:30 a.m. on Monday. As our earlier posting noted, some editors may be more willing to work out arrangements for reporters to come in late than to pay overtime — and working out a deal to come in at 10:30 is likely to be easier to arranging to come in at 11:30.