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Ken Kujak was fed up with 'this 55-hour baloney.'

After nine years of working weekends, nights, and holidays, Kujak decided to call it quits. "I decided at [age] 62 I was tired of this 55-hour baloney," he said in a recent interview. He gave two months notice and started rolling his benefits out of the company. RadioShack responded, Kujak said, first by demoting him, then, "two weeks before I retired, they fired me."

Today, Kujak, who lives in Sanger in Denton County, works part-time at Home Depot. He is also among about 1,000 past and present RadioShack employees who have recently joined a class action lawsuit accusing the electronics retailer of violating federal overtime laws -- a court action that has sparked a sideline fight over free speech that pits the giant retailer against a tiny non-profit web site known as www.RadioShackSucks.com.

In its "Answers University" in the bottom floor of Fort Worth's old Tandy Center, RadioShack displays numerous large color photos of smiling RadioShack workers and promotes itself as unequivocally "the best place to work." But former employees say it's anything but. In lawsuits filed in four states against the Fort Worth-based company, workers say RadioShack labels sales people as managers to avoid paying them overtime. A not-so-small fortune is at stake: One law firm suing the company says the unpaid overtime could total $100 million and affect 10,000 managers. The company has already paid out almost $30 million to settle one such lawsuit filed in California.

RadioShack critics say the dispute over pay morphed into a First Amendment fight about free speech after the company sued the RadioShackSucks site for defamation, temporarily shutting it down. And that fight has left RadioShack, a company with a stated vision to "connect people to the wonders of modern technology," fighting accusations that it really just wants to silence the site that has become such a thorn in its side.

Mark Hill, RadioShack's senior vice president, said the company is merely responding to attacks from disgruntled former workers and attorneys driven by multi-million-dollar settlements. The company says it treats its workers fairly and respects their First Amendment rights. "There was information posted on this site that we thought posed security threats to our system," Hill said. "This cottage industry of overtime lawsuits has not singled out RadioShack ... . Many other major retailers are dealing with the same issue."

RadioShackSucks, founded by a disgruntled customer and now run by a former store manager, features a bulletin board where more than 3,000 members carry on a disjointed conversation about a store some love and many hate. RadioShack claims it never intended to shut the site down, and that such sites are a nuisance big businesses must tolerate. Operators of "suck.com" sites have targeted corporations such as Wal-Mart, Best Buy, and Taco Bell, along with individuals such as Oprah Winfrey and George W. Bush. Some of the savvier companies were smart enough to acquire the domain names before their adversaries seized them.

In this case, RadioShack says the chatter on the site went beyond the bounds of protected speech when two former workers posted information the company said contained trade secrets, copyrighted software, and suggestions on how to defraud the company.

But Daniel Touhy, a Chicago lawyer who is suing the company, said there is no precedent for shutting down an internet bulletin board because of anonymously posted comments -- regardless of what was said.

"It's like suing Jay Leno because he's hammering on some politician," Touhy said. "I've never seen a temporary restraining order (like the one that briefly brought down RadioShackSucks) issued because of defamation.''

Overtime policies aren't the only complaints raised by current and former RadioShack employees. On the anti-RadioShack site and elsewhere, they describe the company's "Big Brother" security practices, questionable inventory policies, and a culture that squeezes hours of extra work from some employees without paying them.

That's not the reality Hill reports. The vice president said surveys show that RadioShack workers are satisfied and "see a bright future for themselves and the company.''

RadioShack's roots go back to two businesses founded in the early 1900s -- a shoestring supplier in Fort Worth and ham radio mail-order house in Boston. The shoe supply company, which eventually grew into Tandy Corp., purchased Boston's RadioShack in 1963 and racked up millions in the early 1970s with hugely profitable sales of CB radios and the TRS-80 personal computer, an inexpensive utilitarian laptop nicknamed "Trash 80'' by its users.

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