The severance agreement contains a requirement that you not seek re-employment or any remunerative relationship with the company. This would seem to prohibit freelancing. But some who left in prior layoffs and buyouts have freelanced for the paper.
Anyone know if this was part of past agreements? Wondering if it's just not enforced or if this is a new issue.
Thanks.
I know there are managers out there who read this blog. Can we have something like a definitive answer, please? Anonymous would be fine.
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I was told by Gary Finney that freelancing is not prohibited under the separation agreement.
ReplyDeleteThat's interesting as several of us folks who were laid off were told that we could not freelance for the News afterwards.
ReplyDeleteStar-Telegram's dismissed are facing the same situation.
ReplyDeleteI've known laid-off people who began freelancing, even those HR originally said no dice.
ReplyDeleteBest course of action is to seek it out. If you're told no, you've lost nothing.
I was told that as long as the work is done out of the building on the freelancer's own computer, then it was fine. This was also the case with an employee of mine who took the buyout last time and now freelances.
ReplyDeleteHere's the word from management today: Freelance is ok as long as the freelancer is not doing the same work as was done in the previous job. For example, an education reporter couldn't write about the same things he/she was writing about before the layoff.
ReplyDeleteThe word I got from a reasonably high-ranking boss: It's still unclear. Before the RIF it appeared that the policy would be that freelance would be OK. Since the RIF, some attemtps to use some of the departed for freelance have not gone through. But that could just be an administrative delay. He thinks it will end up OK.
ReplyDelete