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(EMAILWIRE.COM, April 09, 2011 ) San Francisco, CA -- FindLaw, an online publication owned by Thomson Reuters that supplies legal information and other content about law, finds itself the subject in the Santa Clara Superior Court as San Francisco bloggers rise against it and demand overtime pay.
Jason Beahm, a journalist and attorney who worked for FindLaw as a writer over a year ago, said that he and several other bloggers wrote for the Reuters' publication for more than 40 hours—60 hours, even, for some writers—a week without any compensation. In addition, the writers even had to sacrifice lunch lunch breaks to finish their jobs. Beahm made $23 an hour as basic compensation, but the overtime pay was left undistributed.
Bill Corman, Beahm's lawyer, said, "FindLaw knew that these writers were working in excess of 40 hours a week, but the message was, 'You work as many hours as you need to get the job done.'" Corman added that it was not an unusual issue in the field of business.
Business analyst Rick Edmonds says that a huge portion of the problem has to do with the weakening of writers' unions.
"It's because of the nature of the work -- it's not a 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. job," Edmonds further says.
Beahm has hired Bay Area law firms Bogatin, Corman and Gold of Oakland and Hinton, Alfert, Sumner and Kaufman of Walnut Creek for the case.
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