Suggestions: Current job being eliminated, being thrusted into new one

Oh, absolutely. My wife is a registered nurse, so my job is just screw around money, and I have no intentions on quitting without landing another job, but if push comes to shove, I don't have to have the job. And I'm hoping I can land elsewhere. Thanks for all the information. And I have went to the higher ups, they are still standing at offering no extra compensation.

 

I am not surprised.

 

You mean if the only way you can get unemployment is your position getting eliminated?
If I miss deadline a few times and they fire me, no unemployment?

 

If they fire you for cause, you don't get unemployment. I've never heard of a case in which someone did.

 

New twist in the ongoing saga: Today, I walk in publisher's office telling him that I need to be off Friday and Saturday cause today was my fifth day in the work week, already working Sunday through Thursday, and he asks to confirm what I was making at my former paper so everything would be set up correctly come pay day.

He says my pay was $28,000. Of course, I'm stunned, cause when I was hired on the salary was $29,000 discussed by two higher ups. And for the past 2 1/2 years that is what I have made, no issues what so ever. Told him I could provide pay stubs to confirm this since former paper is claiming I only made $28,000.

So what can I do about this if they try and drop my salary down $1,000/year?

 

On unemployment, if they are moving you out of your town area you don't have to accept the move. To be honest, an extra $50 a week in gas at $3 a gallon means the job is about 45 minutes away. That to me is too far if you wish not to do it.

You are getting laid off. Tell them you don't want the job there and to give you a pink slip. Another thing is, they are moving your job description from a weekly to a daily. That's a radical change in jobs.

This is an easy unemployment case and you will get it. You better not exaggerate though. If it is only 15 miles a way, that's not too far, and your cost isn't $50 a week or $200 a month. Let's make that clear.

My advice? Stick with the daily job. You are 26, why the heck would you want to stay with a weekly? Not to bang on weeklies, but I worked on one and I found the work painstaking.

Go to the daily, get some skin in the game and kick ass. At 26, don't complain "how they do things." That's just not a good attitude. Go there and kick ass.

 

It's not that I'm complaining how they do things. It's that none of the computers have matching design software, so everything is patched together, etc., and on top of that I'll be doing that daily's pages, including the former weekly I was at, and in the next month or so, they intend to have me work on another sister daily paper the company owns. All the while screwing up my pay.

I know you guys are trying to make the argument of stepping up from a weekly to a daily, but in this case it's really not, just for the simple fact of who the company is that owns these newspapers. My job at the weekly wasn't bad. Everything was uniform. All the software matched and there were no issues. At the new gig, they have four different folks who design pages for their paper, none who have the same version of the design software, so setting up any kind of templates, style sheets, etc., is next-near impossible until they decide to upgrade.

It's just a bad situation, and getting worse with the new development that they are trying to lower my salary.

 

Of course they're going to lowball you. But be sure you tell them, when they try to dick you on hours, that you are going to work 40 hours or get paid overtime. And document every minute.

 

Depends on the state, of course.

If they can prove that you did something criminally wrong, like steal money from them, or not show up for work, unemployment won't look too kindly at that. If they fire you because you just aren't doing the job the perfect way they want it despite your best efforts, I would think unemployment would still allow you to collect.

Was the publisher flat-out saying that you were making $28K or was he just randomly throwing that number out there as a guess? Not saying that he isn't trying to screw you, but giving him the benefit of the doubt for the moment, maybe he doesn't have everyone's salary memorized?

Check your umemployment site first. In my state, they consider an hour's drive or 50 miles to be the maximum, and a longer trip if it's by public transportation.

Although, when I went to an unemployment seminar, the woman there said that because times are tough, they wouldn't make someone travel 50 miles for a $10/hour job. Still, you never know if they would go back on their word.

 

So publisher calls me this morning and tells me they did have an error on the bookkeeping side and I did indeed make the salary that I told him. And that they had it worked out that I would make the same as I have each pay period, but after doing the number crunching I will make $100 less per pay period and $2,600 less per year gross. I called the state labor board and the state unemployment office and they act like there's nothing they can do for me.

The problem that I gather is when I was hired at the salary I was, the company was in desperate need of a journalist instead of the one's the typical small rags hire, and they offered me a good amount of money. And being around some of the company's sister papers and other colleagues, I've found out that I'm probably the highest-paid person in this area for their papers.

So in my mind, they are trying to force me out, so they can save money, and bring someone else in to do the job for $8-9 an hour. That's the only thing I believe they are changing my salary from less than $2,600 of what I was making yearly, making me drive an hour round trip every day, etc.

 

An hour round trip every day? That's a half-hour ride. While it sucks about the gas mileage for you, very few companies, even out of the industry, are going to be sympathetic to you because you have to drive a half-hour to get to work and a half-hour home.

Drive your hour round-trip, send out some resumes and hope in a few months you'll find something better.

 

Guess what? It's not an act. There's nothing they can do for you. If your company wants to fuck you over, they're entitled to fuck you over. It's well within their rights to throw you out the door and hire someone to do the job for cheaper. Got a union? If not, get a lawyer if you want to fight it.