If PTO isn’t paid out on termination, then PTO cannot be safely accrued.
The undersigned should state that this behavior leaves them with no choice but to draw down their PTO balance, perhaps starting a specific day next week.
But I wonder if the employees that weren’t in a state which requires paying out PTO balances had expected to be paid their PTO balance? Usually this is one of those things that’s addressed in the employment contract.
I am guessing they didn't expect to get laid off. Employment contracts can be tricky to negotiate, since at that point you usually want the job. It also isn't something most people do regularly or even know much about. Especially not if they are relatively young.
The US is just nuts. Are you saying that your earned but unused PTO doesn't have to be paid out to you when you're laid off but is rather at the discretion of the employer? How is that justifiable in any way? Does the bank owe you accrued interest when you close your account or is it up to them to pay it? Why would it be different for PTO?
Non-salary benefits used to be extremely uncommon in the USA. During WW2, price and wage controls were enacted that made it illegal to increase prices for many types of goods, or salaries for many types of employees. This made it almost impossible for employers to find enough employees, so they started finding creative ways to sweeten the deal besides just increasing salary. Thus, virtually everyone now gets health insurance from an insurance company chosen by their employer rather than one they choose themselves, we tip workers that do certain jobs rather than paying them a normal wage, time off is negotiated ahead of time, etc.
Or, executives trying to save any penny they can, so if the company is ever gobbled up by a large conglomerate, such as NBC or Combast, or merged with another media company, people like Jonah Peretti, Lenke Taylor and Ben Smith can laugh their way to the bank.
At my first job in US I had about a year and a half of unused PTO accumulated. I gave my two week notice like a good team player I was and then left on the agreed upon date.
I obviously didn't get any of the PTO paid to me and in retrospect realize that I could have just taken my last two weeks off with the same outcome.
I was so sure that there must be some law that would force employer to pay out unused PTO, that I haven't even thought about researching it in advance. This was a rude "welcome to United States, bitch" awakening for me.
A place I used to work set it at 160 hours, got bought, then changed it to 80 hours, everyone made a big enough stink by threatening to take off during critical times. They changed it the cap to two times your yearly accrual rate which put the cap somewhere between 240 and 400 hours depending on your seniority. The cap was nice but it was almost impossible to use that much leave with the amount of job responsibility you had. You could sell your hours but it had to be agreed on at the beginning of the year and the payout spread out across the year so there was no way you could get a quick influx of cash.
That's pretty much the classic mistake individuals make when dealing with businesses though. There's no reason to restrict yourself to the legal system and terms of a contract if you think you have leverage enough to do better.
The same people who wouldn't think twice about some PC expose that ruins a person's life forever, same people will fight for a couple days vacation time...
You missed that people are employed with rights to accrue leave, but only some have it bound in states rights laws and that BuzzFeed is trying to avoid honouring the spirit of employment conditions their staff worked under?
I think they’re saying if they played loose with ethics in their management encouraging suspect reporting that one can expect the same ethics when it comes to their business end of things.
Yea.. that would make sense: be careful who you work for, lest the conditions of employment turn out to reflect a side of things you normally saw turned on others?
Sounds similar to Vice Media and their sexual harassment problem...
I really wish these companies did a lot better because honestly now I just feel cynical about paying attention to what they’re publishing that I just try and avoid online media altogether.
> BuzzFeed is trying to avoid honouring the spirit of employment conditions their staff worked under
Which on its own could support the idea that if a corporation can't self-govern to be fair to its current and former employees without asterisks and gotchas, some greater (e.g. government) or counter (e.g. union) authority should hold the company accountable.
I do believe that all BuzzFeed employees should be entitled to their PTO if they were misled to believe they would get it when they worked there. As for whether unionization or more regulation is necessary here, I do not know enough about the issue to form a strong opinion -- the above observation was just an observation.
To a certain degree, what goes around comes around. In general Buzzfeed is a purveyor of fake news so the silver lining is that it will develop a reputation as an employer.
Which parts of their news is fake? Aside from some recent claims by the current Presidency (who claims that about any non-positive reference), I’m unaware that they’ve invented anything, in part or in full, to claim it as news.
They may be annoying as all get-out in some aspects of their overall operation, but you’re claiming they make shit up?
Do you not yet understand that the term "fake news" does not strictly refer to news that is literally fake and made up, or is that just a straw-man that makes it easier to be dismissive?
Fake news features, but is not limited to:
The "half-truth," a deceptive statement made by using some, but not all, elements of the truth.
The Big Lie Technique (also the Bold Faced Lie; "Staying on Message."): The contemporary fallacy of repeating a lie, fallacy, slogan, talking-point, nonsense-statement or deceptive half-truth over and over in different forms (particularly in the media) until it becomes part of daily discourse and people accept it without further proof or evidence.
Information Cascade, "in which people echo the opinions of others, usually online, even when their own opinions or exposure to information contradicts that opinion. When information cascades form a pattern, this pattern can begin to overpower later opinions by making it seem as if a consensus already exists."
Confirmation Bias: the common tendency to notice, search out, select and share evidence that confirms one's own standpoint and beliefs, as opposed to contrary evidence.
Whatever narrative the mainstream media is pushing may be "based in facts" while remaining incomplete, inaccurate, and, overall, false.
Finally, considering the fact that the sources for 90% of information media likely to be consumed by the average person are owned by 5 or 6 consolidated corporations, the idea that they would not and have not abused this incredible power is easily one of the most naive and deliberately ignorant statements a person could make in 2019, especially in the information age just as they are finally being exposed.
That this is about Buzzfeed News, a serious news site which has won serveral awards and honors for its reporting [1], not Buzzfeed, the listicle, pop culture, click-bait, gossip site [2].
I've never found this argument convincing. "This is not the bad part of the organization. This is the part they spun up to help bolster their reputation so the bad part can continue to make money".
That said, it's a bit tangential to the core issue here. People should get payed out for their accrued PTO.
I think you're missing making the same comments about other people who ruin lives in an instant, like police, soldiers, prosecutors, lawmakers, BuzzFeed's board of directors, etc. yet also demand vacation time.
Because not every employee was complicit in that....... And those that weren’t most definitely DO deserve their PTO.
The problem is when you say “same people” you’re just lumping everyone together and implying everyone at Buzzfeed news was trying to run articles that ruins a person’s life forever. That’s what you’re missing.
> Because not every employee was complicit in that...
Companies like Amazon frequently get skewered for a single sensational negative event at one of their warehouses. That one negative event is then extrapolated and taken to mean it's very common (thousands of their employees are forced to piss in bottles), with zero evidence to support that premise.
Why should BuzzFeed and its employees not get to enjoy the media propaganda and sensationalism turned right back on them? I fail to see why they'd be immune to the same negativity they're helping to build up in the US culture. Working for any part of the BuzzFeed machine, they're all complicit in helping to cultivate numerous of the nightmare cultural problems eating at the US, including the entirely rotten state of the US media industry.
BuzzFeed News helps to pay the bills for BuzzFeed and helps to keep the whole brand alive and kicking for another day to spew more garbage into the culture. They are in fact directly linked because of that.
To use a crystal-clear, point-proving example: employees that help create bombs for the military industrial complex are not complicit at all in what those bombs are used for? For example, blowing up school buses. The countless employees that help support all of that and make it possible, are not complicit in any way? Obviously they are. Work for a corporation doing terrible things, you share responsibility for its output. Every part of BuzzFeed's organization assists the core BuzzFeed company.
The only way that context would be dramatically or entirely reduced, is if they spun off BuzzFeed News, strictly separated it financially, ditched the brand and removed all BuzzFeed influence and control. As it is, they're all part of the same company.
it's funny you don't like this argument in the context of buzzfeed. when i made the same point to the thread-mob hating on facebook employees, no one shared my view that maybe not all employees of a company that has issues are responsible for those issues.
> Laborers deserve to be paid for their labor, and compensated fairly.
Everyone has a different notion of what's "fair". How about we write down an agreement about it on paper before doing business with someone, sign it and then just stick to it?
Because it's a company with at-will employment. Businesses are operational functions that maximize value for a pool of shareholders. Unless you're in the pool, you're a cost and a liability.
Because just as individual contributors change employers a lot, managers also change employers often enough that the reputation of mistreating workers doesn't stick to anything.
My own employer recently hired a handful of senior HR folks from Uber. They started after I joined. I hate it, but what can I do? I know they were present at Uber during Susan Fowler's very strange year; I don't know if they were actually the people making decisions. And if I preemptively quit, what is my guarantee that the next place will be any better?
I really can't imagine that unless you're a senior manager yourself. Most likely the answer would be a surprised and more or less sensibly worded "it's none of your business".
They prey on the young. Look at BuzzFeed's staff demographic. A lot of them are younger than 35. Five years ago, BuzzFeed, at least in the journalism community, seemed like the place to be: the company was growing, their news team was just getting off the ground and the resources seemed endless. One would think the traffic brought in by Disney princess quizzes would pay the bills. Sadly, that is not the case.
Video is still king over there. I'd be curious to know how many videographers and video editors lost their jobs compared to reporters.
Trendy companies tend to hire young people who are desperate for a career-starting job. As an individual they have no power in that situation, which I suspect is why this letter has been signed collectively by a lot of Buzzfeed staff.
See also Mic,[1] which laid off its entire editorial staff in response to the formation of a union (but prior to a contract being signed).
For counterexamples, see Vice,[2] which negotiated a nearly 30% pay hike in their first union contract, and Slate,[3] whose editorial union recently negotiated a $51,000 starting salary with annual pay increases.
Note that a union is not a guarantee against layoffs. See [4]: the Huffington Post recently lost 15 of its unionized employees to a layoff. On the upside, they were contractually guaranteed severance pay - because they collectively bargained for it.
You mind elaborating on this? Are you saying the mentality is to just show up, do the job within the allotted day then head home, knowing the company doesn't owe you thing, no matter how many extra hours you put in?
If a benefit isn't spelled out in black and white, it should be considered non-existent.
Example: I used to get a ham at Christmas time. This was a gift from the company (i.e not in my contact). We had a bad year in 2017 and there was no ham - that's fine.
PTO is a benefit since there is no law that it has to be given out. Paying out PTO after you leave is another thing that isn't mandated so therefore it's a benefit. PTO and the payout of the balance shouldn't be a benefit, it should be the law.
This. Right on the money. Got absolutely clobbered for saying the same thing in a different way - this situation is a hard, abject lesson in read-what-you-sign.
I've never actually had what can be described as an "employment contract," the only thing is I've ever signed is a paper saying my starting salary, full time status, and that I'm "at will" so employment can be terminated for any reason by either party.
Policies like this (PTO accruals, buybacks, etc.) are determined by HR policies that are unilaterally published by the company, but they aren't "guaranteed" by any means; HR policies can (and do) change at any time with no notice. So how does "reading my employment contract" protect me? They can just change the policy from "we'll buyback your unused PTO" to "you forfeit unused PTO" a week before the layoffs. I've actually seen this exact thing happen before. (end PTO buybacks then immediately enact mass layoffs)
Once I worked for a company for about 3 or 4 years during that time they dropped the 401(k) match completely (no advanced notice), dropped long term disability (maybe a week advanced notice), dropped max PTO accruals, and changed the health insurance significantly every single year, including changing the company managing the plan. Then there's always the classic "we're changing the PTO accrual schedule."
Do you people who apparently have "employment contracts" sign a new one every time your pay changes? Or benefits change? What if someone refused to sign the new one? Then they'd just get fired on the spot, so it's basically the same thing as a unilateral company directive, just with a lot of handwavings.
However Buzzfeed is acting in good faith, it paid a minimum of 10 weeks plus other benefices until April. It is some shocking, usually, companies are crueler (the average is to give nothing) and how their former employees are retributing it? Bitting it back.
I've worked for many companies that don't pay out accrued PTO - PTO at those companies was use-it-or-lose-it. But I also understood that going in, and I understood that when I read the employee handbooks and explanation of benefits.
It seems folks might have overlooked that bit of their employment. California is obviously a large exception. However, if an employer doesn't state that you get a particular benefit, or fails to explain how a benefit is managed, the onus falls on the employee to understand what they're signing on for. To expect otherwise drips of entitlement.
Yes, that all boils down to accountability for one's own choices. They made poor choices, that's just what it is. Now they're clamoring for something that wasn't promised to them. There's a degree of responsibility that these folks are tossing out the window in favor of entitlement.
Please read up on the guidelines of HN. I really hate to backseat mod but I've seen a sharp rise in people complaining about their posts being downvoted and it adds absolutely nothing to the conversation.
That might indicate that some additional measures could be used to encourage dissenting opinion without a comment being sent to the black pit of despair in quick fashion.
Do you extend this sentiment to people as well? Or do you sometimes get upset when people do evil or immoral thing that technically stays on the right side of the law?
I do if I don't know or trust them. Of course I can dislike those people and stop my dealing with them, but I can't really be surprised they're doing something they're allowed to do.
There really needs to be more national level laws around PTO. Like my current employer has a policy to pay it out, but recently they've decided to cut our maximum rollovers from 6+ weeks (150% of accrual) to 1 week maximum from year to year. First world problems but this year I'm going to be taking a ton of days off.
I mean sure they can do that, but why can't we just have a set rule and stick with it?
The company I currently work at uses the term "awarded" instead of accrued for PTO. This is their way of justifying not paying out unused PTO at termination (ie. it was not "earned" therefor they don't have to pay it out).
101 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 174 ms ] threadIf PTO isn’t paid out on termination, then PTO cannot be safely accrued.
The undersigned should state that this behavior leaves them with no choice but to draw down their PTO balance, perhaps starting a specific day next week.
But I wonder if the employees that weren’t in a state which requires paying out PTO balances had expected to be paid their PTO balance? Usually this is one of those things that’s addressed in the employment contract.
My understanding is that it is stated in the contract.
Simply: Corporate greed.
Or, executives trying to save any penny they can, so if the company is ever gobbled up by a large conglomerate, such as NBC or Combast, or merged with another media company, people like Jonah Peretti, Lenke Taylor and Ben Smith can laugh their way to the bank.
I obviously didn't get any of the PTO paid to me and in retrospect realize that I could have just taken my last two weeks off with the same outcome.
I was so sure that there must be some law that would force employer to pay out unused PTO, that I haven't even thought about researching it in advance. This was a rude "welcome to United States, bitch" awakening for me.
Don't most companies cap it at 5 days or something?
But it seems a bit late to complain about the terms of a contract after said contract has ended.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/28/media/buzzfeed-layoffs-pto/in...
Edit: oh only in CA
Sleazy company employs stupid people. I don't really care who wins this one.
Before you down-vote, what am I missing?
I really wish these companies did a lot better because honestly now I just feel cynical about paying attention to what they’re publishing that I just try and avoid online media altogether.
Which on its own could support the idea that if a corporation can't self-govern to be fair to its current and former employees without asterisks and gotchas, some greater (e.g. government) or counter (e.g. union) authority should hold the company accountable.
I do believe that all BuzzFeed employees should be entitled to their PTO if they were misled to believe they would get it when they worked there. As for whether unionization or more regulation is necessary here, I do not know enough about the issue to form a strong opinion -- the above observation was just an observation.
They may be annoying as all get-out in some aspects of their overall operation, but you’re claiming they make shit up?
Fake news features, but is not limited to:
The "half-truth," a deceptive statement made by using some, but not all, elements of the truth.
The Big Lie Technique (also the Bold Faced Lie; "Staying on Message."): The contemporary fallacy of repeating a lie, fallacy, slogan, talking-point, nonsense-statement or deceptive half-truth over and over in different forms (particularly in the media) until it becomes part of daily discourse and people accept it without further proof or evidence.
Information Cascade, "in which people echo the opinions of others, usually online, even when their own opinions or exposure to information contradicts that opinion. When information cascades form a pattern, this pattern can begin to overpower later opinions by making it seem as if a consensus already exists."
Confirmation Bias: the common tendency to notice, search out, select and share evidence that confirms one's own standpoint and beliefs, as opposed to contrary evidence.
Whatever narrative the mainstream media is pushing may be "based in facts" while remaining incomplete, inaccurate, and, overall, false.
Finally, considering the fact that the sources for 90% of information media likely to be consumed by the average person are owned by 5 or 6 consolidated corporations, the idea that they would not and have not abused this incredible power is easily one of the most naive and deliberately ignorant statements a person could make in 2019, especially in the information age just as they are finally being exposed.
That this is about Buzzfeed News, a serious news site which has won serveral awards and honors for its reporting [1], not Buzzfeed, the listicle, pop culture, click-bait, gossip site [2].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BuzzFeed_News
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BuzzFeed
That said, it's a bit tangential to the core issue here. People should get payed out for their accrued PTO.
Buzzfeed publishes gossip, entertainment, and online quizzes, as well as their news and in-depth reporting.
That aside, they should get paid for their PTO.
The problem is when you say “same people” you’re just lumping everyone together and implying everyone at Buzzfeed news was trying to run articles that ruins a person’s life forever. That’s what you’re missing.
Companies like Amazon frequently get skewered for a single sensational negative event at one of their warehouses. That one negative event is then extrapolated and taken to mean it's very common (thousands of their employees are forced to piss in bottles), with zero evidence to support that premise.
Why should BuzzFeed and its employees not get to enjoy the media propaganda and sensationalism turned right back on them? I fail to see why they'd be immune to the same negativity they're helping to build up in the US culture. Working for any part of the BuzzFeed machine, they're all complicit in helping to cultivate numerous of the nightmare cultural problems eating at the US, including the entirely rotten state of the US media industry.
BuzzFeed News helps to pay the bills for BuzzFeed and helps to keep the whole brand alive and kicking for another day to spew more garbage into the culture. They are in fact directly linked because of that.
To use a crystal-clear, point-proving example: employees that help create bombs for the military industrial complex are not complicit at all in what those bombs are used for? For example, blowing up school buses. The countless employees that help support all of that and make it possible, are not complicit in any way? Obviously they are. Work for a corporation doing terrible things, you share responsibility for its output. Every part of BuzzFeed's organization assists the core BuzzFeed company.
The only way that context would be dramatically or entirely reduced, is if they spun off BuzzFeed News, strictly separated it financially, ditched the brand and removed all BuzzFeed influence and control. As it is, they're all part of the same company.
Because we're meant to learn as children that that's a dangerous and counter-productive path to go down.
If we're actually serious about expecting people to live up to the standards we're arguing for, we need to be willing to live up to them ourselves.
The concerns of labor should be given as much weight as the concerns of profit maximization.
IF YOU DID WORK FOR A LEGAL EMPLOYER, YOU DESERVE TO BE PAID FOR IT.
(I'm adding to what the op said)
Everyone has a different notion of what's "fair". How about we write down an agreement about it on paper before doing business with someone, sign it and then just stick to it?
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
"Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.
So could you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and not post like that to HN?
My own employer recently hired a handful of senior HR folks from Uber. They started after I joined. I hate it, but what can I do? I know they were present at Uber during Susan Fowler's very strange year; I don't know if they were actually the people making decisions. And if I preemptively quit, what is my guarantee that the next place will be any better?
You know like those mega rich celebrities that preach socialism but hide their millions off shore.
Video is still king over there. I'd be curious to know how many videographers and video editors lost their jobs compared to reporters.
If it barks like journalism and wags its tail like journalism than is it not journalism? (it might also have fleas like a dog!)
Same argument for "trendy company".
For counterexamples, see Vice,[2] which negotiated a nearly 30% pay hike in their first union contract, and Slate,[3] whose editorial union recently negotiated a $51,000 starting salary with annual pay increases.
Note that a union is not a guarantee against layoffs. See [4]: the Huffington Post recently lost 15 of its unionized employees to a layoff. On the upside, they were contractually guaranteed severance pay - because they collectively bargained for it.
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/mic-layoff-bustle-union-labo...
[2] https://gawker.com/vice-writers-get-a-union-contract-with-a-...
[3] https://wwd.com/business-news/media/slate-media-editorial-st...
[4] https://twitter.com/HuffPostUnion/status/1088524725259628544
When you realize they don't care about you, they will feel it. And your pay will go up. I guarantee.
If a benefit isn't spelled out in black and white, it should be considered non-existent.
Example: I used to get a ham at Christmas time. This was a gift from the company (i.e not in my contact). We had a bad year in 2017 and there was no ham - that's fine.
Policies like this (PTO accruals, buybacks, etc.) are determined by HR policies that are unilaterally published by the company, but they aren't "guaranteed" by any means; HR policies can (and do) change at any time with no notice. So how does "reading my employment contract" protect me? They can just change the policy from "we'll buyback your unused PTO" to "you forfeit unused PTO" a week before the layoffs. I've actually seen this exact thing happen before. (end PTO buybacks then immediately enact mass layoffs)
Once I worked for a company for about 3 or 4 years during that time they dropped the 401(k) match completely (no advanced notice), dropped long term disability (maybe a week advanced notice), dropped max PTO accruals, and changed the health insurance significantly every single year, including changing the company managing the plan. Then there's always the classic "we're changing the PTO accrual schedule."
Do you people who apparently have "employment contracts" sign a new one every time your pay changes? Or benefits change? What if someone refused to sign the new one? Then they'd just get fired on the spot, so it's basically the same thing as a unilateral company directive, just with a lot of handwavings.
It seems folks might have overlooked that bit of their employment. California is obviously a large exception. However, if an employer doesn't state that you get a particular benefit, or fails to explain how a benefit is managed, the onus falls on the employee to understand what they're signing on for. To expect otherwise drips of entitlement.
> No one at BuzzFeed told me not to use PTO. I had a lot saved because I was busy and wanted to be there for my team.
https://twitter.com/FranBerkman/status/1089675336407752704
> I have worked more holidays than I can count, and have gone on tough reporting trips where I’ve worked 16-hour days for days in a row.
> I have about a month’s worth of comp days as a result. If I’d been laid off Friday, I wouldn’t have gotten paid for it.
https://twitter.com/juliareinstein/status/108967206892331417...
I mean sure they can do that, but why can't we just have a set rule and stick with it?