Bad Employeer
Be careful and consider yourself warned if you should go to work for Haugo Broadcasting of South Dakota. The Company is family owned and their son runs the radio stations. I've only had two bad employeers in my 17 years of broadcasting (see Paul Earl Lowrey) and the Haugos are one of the two.
We were contacted by Chris Haugo to come work for him. He wanted to turn the station he owned around from the downward spiral they had been in since he started operating them. He agreed to terms of a contract and employment. When we showed up to sign the contract there was none, we were assured by Chris that everything would be taken care of and we could trust him. So we quit our jobs, put our home up for sale and moved to South Dakota.
When we started work for Haugo Broadcasting (KSQY) there was still no contract and the terms we agreed to suddenly changed drastically. We were required to put in at least 65 hours of work a week at the station building. This didn't include time outside the building doing things for the station. We would be clocked if we left the building and were allowed 2, 15 minute breaks and one 30 minute lunch break. If you were a minute over you either had to work an extra hour or were docked an hour of pay.
Once our child was sick and I had to leave and get her from school. I was done with my duties but I had only been at the station 7 hours and not 9. I went to get her anyway and took her home. The next day Chris Haugo spent the better part of two hours telling me what a horrible employee I was and that he was docking me the entire days pay for leaving.
When we quit Chris Haugo illegally withheld our moving expenses from my wifes check. We ended up having to hire a lawyer and sue him for those expenses. We won but the attorney cost us $300.00 and we only recieved $75.00 from the courts and it took 9 months to get our money.
Haugo Broadcasting still owes us two weeks vacation pay each, per our agreement but refuses to pay even thought the state labor board said they should ( the state labor bosrd holds no actual authority). They also owe numerous partial days pay that were withheld illegally but once again are saying sue us for them.
They are very abusive to employees at least they were to us and did not live up to their promises. The finaly straw with them was when Chris Haugo accused my wife of having sex with clients in order to get sales orders. He did this to my face in his weekly closed door meeting in which he would spend two to three hours telling me how worthless I was.
By the way we gave KSQY the frist positive ratings they had recieved since Chris Haugo started running the startion for his dad, and my wife Brenda had the highest rated show ever for a radio station in the Rapid City Market.
We are not the only ones they have abused there are many others and they are willing to tell tales as bad and even worse so if they should offer you a job, unless you like to suffer, run away as fast as you can.