The Telegraph in Nashua has been in the news lately for a high profile firing and resignation. Now the paper is under investigation by the state’s labor department.
In late November, the labor department got a call from a Telegraph employee, who claimed the paper wasn’t paying them the full amount they were due.
Labor Commissioner Ken Merrifield would not name the employee, but said the complaint involved a time clock issue – where the employee wasn’t getting paid for the full hours worked
Merrifield says an investigator will be looking into this soon and stressed that the long delay was due to high caseloads within the department. On average his office sees roughly 800 cases a year.
“We are taking every complaint seriously – there’s just a limited amount of staff that can go out on the road and do thorough inspections," Merrifield said. "So we have to assign some kind of priority to calls so have we heard from a larger number of employees this case would have been investigated more quickly.”
Earlier this month, veteran editor Sandy Bucknam was fired from the paper. He claimed the paper’s out-of-state owner’s – Ogden Newspapers - overworked staff to cut costs. Bucknam’s job has been filled by Matthew Burdette, who comes from a West Virginia paper also owned by Ogden.
