In a black/white world, Shawdowman, you are correct. Have you ever been in this situation before? I hadn't. Most of the others had not.
On January 30th, 2006, we were told checks due Feb. 1st would be "delayed", but were promised they would be there by Friday. We had a hearty debate about walking out right there and then, but chose to finish out the day. The following day, they told us production was "temporarily shutting down" and we'd have our checks by Monday at the latest. We were being told not to bother coming in to work until they had our checks (which I assured them would not be a problem until they had my money). When it was clear there would be no checks that Monday, I began organizing the filings with the labor board. Monday turned into Tuesday, then Wednesday again. That day everyone received a call telling them Q was shutting down to "reorganize", but they would get us our checks as soon as they came in, "courier them over" if they had to.
On February 13th, the skeleton crew, myself included, received phone calls explaining Q intended to go back on air in a minimal capacity while they cleaned up the mess. They had our checks - but ONLY if we came back to work. Several of us voiced concern about the other employees and a few of us were assured the others would be paid by that Friday. I was also promised no one would be stiffed on checks again because they knew the labor board would shut them down if they did (so they said at the time). They told us a "deal" had been made with the labor board to allow us to come back, so long as we were paid.
I later tried to confirm this with the labor board (long after the promise to pay the others turned into "I don't know who promised that...") and was told it was "total b.s.", there was no such deal. According to the labor board rep, we were ENCOURAGED to go back to work IF it meant we got our money, because it was a better chance than if we didn't.
Once in there, we were constantly pressured that the only way we'd see everyone else get paid was if we kept working to keep it alive. I also repeatedly assured them that if they missed another payroll, in any way, I would stop production that day. They came very close one day, but knowing we were serious, the checks were rushed into the studio five minutes before "QTN World News" began.
When Fan called everyone in on April 28th to announce he was now stiffing us for the pay due in May, I just started laughing and walked out of the meeting, collected my belongings, filed my final two time cards (mockingm y odds of seeing the money), said some goodbyes and was out of there. They tried to do a couple of shows that day, but were done by the following Monday.
In retrospect, we probably should have gone back to get our checks, hung around for a day, then walked out for good, but they played on our willingness to do what we had to in order to give everyone else a chance to get paid, maybe get their jobs back. Life lesson learned. Not as simple a decision as you indicated it is, though.
AI
