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PRESS ADVISORY

August 28, 2007

Contact: Tracy Rosenberg (510-684-6853) Interim Director, Media Alliance

TWO MEDIA-WORKER COLLECTIVES ATTACKED ON SAME DAY: NORTHERN CALIFORNIA MEDIA GUILD UNION AND KPFA UNPAID STAFF ORGANIZATION BOTH DEPRIVED OF MANAGEMENT RECOGNITION

THE EASTBAY-CALIFORNIA- Within hours of each other, two remarkably similar memos went out at two Bay Area media institutions. Each constitutes an attack on media workers' organizations; one is directed against paid employees, the other against volunteers.

At the Alameda Newspaper Group, counsel for the corporate parent Media News Group declared that ANG would no longer recognize the Northern California Media Guild (CWA 39521) as the representative of ANG employees. Having recently acquired the five-paper Contra Costa Newspaper group in a mass acquisition of 31 community and regional papers, Media News assembled a new entity, (BANG-East Bay), to "maximize news resources". The tactic also maximized the percentage of non-unionized workers in the new unit by adding in Contra Costa's non-unionized work force to tip the balance under the 50% marker. The Media News memo states, "The Company hereby withdraws recognition of your union, effective August 13, 2007". "They jerked the rug out from under us" said Doug Cuthbertson, executive officer of the Northern California Media Workers, in an Editor and Publisher interview. CWA Local 39521 described the company's memo as "a blatant attempt to destroy a 20-year tradition of progressive labor relations in the East Bay news industry".

Meanwhile at Berkeley's venerable KPFA radio (94.1FM), the Unpaid Staff Organization ("UPSO") found itself "derecognized." The UPSO has existed for 17 years as the management-recognized representative of KPFA's unpaid workers. The unpaid staff are responsible for the majority of programming hours at KPFA; they produce nearly all of the station's music shows, and a substantial portion of its news and public affairs programs as well. But an August 13 memo, signed by interim General Manager Lemlem Rijio, declared, "currently, there is no management-recognized 'unpaid staff organization.'" Rijio's memo says that management acted because, "the UPSO has not functioned for nearly two years." Not mentioned in the memo was the fact that an election committee was in the process of conducting a vote to refill the posts of incumbents who had ceased to carry out their duties. Rijio's memo was issued only four days before the ballot due date of the UPSO election.

KPFA's Local Station Board (elected predominantly by listeners) reacted strongly to the management action; the LSB passed a resolution at its August 18th meeting calling upon management to "immediately withdraw, in its entirety, the above-described memorandum claiming to derecognize the UPSO," and to "acknowledge that the UPSO continues to be the legitimate representative of KPFA's unpaid staff."

Although there are many differences between the ANG employees and the KPFA volunteers, these two groups of writers, editors, and producers are both confronting a growing trend; management assaults on media unions and collectives, attacks which leave media workers, like so many others, to confront workplace issues on their own.

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