Broadcast Union News

Class War at the Gray Lady? New York Times Gives Millions to CEO While Pushing Concessions on Union

2012-02-03T17:39:00.000-05:00

Class War at the Gray Lady? New York Times Gives Millions to CEO While Pushing Concessions on Union

www.inthesetimes.com

The New York Times has long been held up as journalism's standard bearer. Thus it seems only fitting that The New York Times Company gave departing CEO Janet Robinson a nearly $15 million severance package while demanding that its current employees take benefit and pay cuts. (Robinson gained early and immediate access to her full pension of $10.9 million, and will earn $4.5 million working as a consultant for the company in 2012.)

images added by Broadcast Union News

At big companies throughout the media industry (like the Tribune Co.), high salaries and large bonuses for those at the top and pay freezes or concessions for those at the bottom have become standard. Of course, it's indisputable that the journalism industry has been in a crunch for years, with layoffs at newspapers around the country, including the New York Times.

But after implementing a pay wall and making other cost-saving changes in 2011, the Times is now pushing a contract on its workers that asks the union to accept an inferior health care plan, eliminates extra pay for working late nights or changing one’s schedule to deal with major breaking stories, and would implement a freeze on contributions to employee pensions. The Times claims the contract would save it $9 million a year.

Still, according to Newspaper Guild of New York President Bill O’Meara, the freeze on contribution to employees' pensions is offensive to Times union members in part because of the million-dollar package given to Robinson.

In a sign of The New York Times Company's intent on freezing pensions, the newspaper unilaterally froze pensions for all foreign employees not covered by the Times' bargaining unit.

This sparked outrage from unionized employees who penned an open letter to the New York Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. on December 23, saying:

Our foreign citizen employees in overseas bureaus have just had their pensions frozen with only a week’s warning. Some of these people have risked their lives so that we can do our jobs. A couple have even lost them. Many have spent their entire careers at the Times -- indeed, some have letters from your father explaining the pension system -- and deserve better treatment.….

We have worked long and hard for this company and have given up pay to keep it solvent. Some of us have risked our lives for it. You have eloquently recognized and paid moving tribute to our work and devotion. The deep disconnect between those words and the demands of your negotiators have given rise to a sense of betrayal.

Steven Greenhouse

The open letter was signed by 546 workers, including veteran Times labor reporter Steven Greenhouse. The New York Times Company did not respond to request for comment for this story.

Writing earlier this year in an article titled “Why Not Occupy the Newsroom”, New York Times media columnist David Carr wrote on the seething inequality between top managers in the news industry and workers:

David Carr
The optics of the bonuses are far worse than the practical impact. Newspapers are asking their employees for shared sacrifice and their digital readers to begin paying. So, lucrative packages won’t cut it. As newspapers all over the country struggle to divine the meaning of the Occupy protests, some of the companies that own them might want to listen closely to see if there is a message there meant for them.

David Carr did not sign onto the letter to Sulzberger Jr., but he did tweet out a link to the letter and later commented on Twitter that “My thinking was that as someone who covers NYT occasionally, I should not take a position.”

But clearly, Carr’s point about inequality in the newspaper industry applies to The New York Times. For now, New York Newspaper Guild President Bill O’Meara says workers at the Times are continuing to organize against the company's proposed contract concessions.

The New York Times Goes All In With The "1 Percenters"

2012-02-03T16:34:00.002-05:00

Kyle Smith, Contributor

It’s a classic American saga of top hats against hard hats, lions versus sheep, the one percenters and the forgotten 99. It’s a story about fundamental unfairness, corporate excess, and naked greed. There are exploited workers seething in revolt and spoiled plutocrats floating along on clouds of happy oblivion.

Somebody get The New York Times on the story. Wait a second – The New York Times is the story. So never mind.

Image added by Broadcast Union News

New York Times employees plan an “urgent” Jan. 9 meeting to discuss their next move because its staff are incensed by the $15 million (Now estimated at $21 Million as of Feb 1, 2012) failure bonus given to outgoing CEO Janet Robinson. Robinson, whose disastrous tenure coincided with a drop in the parent company’s stock price from $40 to less than $8 in seven years, is getting $4.5 million to serve as a “consultant” this year (so the company can avail itself of 12 more months of that storied leadership).

Plus she gets, ahead of schedule, immediate access to a $10.9 million pension (though she is only 61). Her sudden resignation/ouster/defenestration, announced last month, came just three months after Forbes’ Jeff Bercovici said she conducted “what felt rather like a victory lap” to boast of her digital strategy. Third-quarter ad revenue sagged by 8.8 percent.

Meanwhile, according to the president of the Newspaper Guild, the paper is hectoring the workers with demands for concessions. These include pension freezes, savings in the health plan and curtailing bonuses for working late nights or rearranging schedules to deal with unexpected news events. All this would save the company about $9 million this year, or roughly two-thirds of the amount it is paying to a single non-employee: Janet Robinson.

Arthur Sulzberger Jr.

An open letter to Times chieftain Arthur Sulzberger Jr. quickly drew more than 500 signatures, many of them familiar bylines from the paper. Wrote one employee, “The disconnect between the praise lavished upon us and the dismissive treatment we have experienced in negotiations has reached grotesque proportions.”

Somehow the Newspaper of Record has missed this hot developing story, limiting its coverage to the closing lines of a blog post, but then again this is the paper that ignored or was unaware of the 2009 controversy that would force the resignation of avowed communist and 9/11 truther Van Jones as White House “green jobs czar.” (The paper’s editors said it was “understaffed” before a Labor Day weekend when there were nonetheless enough warm bodies to produce a 500-word story on a semi-clothed Times Square panhandler called the Naked Cowboy, who announced he was not running for mayor.)

The uproar within The Times is exactly the sort of development it has breathlessly covered when it’s labeled the Occupy Wall Street movement, which has so obsessed its staff that its classical-music critic recently wrote, “As I listened to these students sing, I thought about the issues of economic inequality that the Occupy Wall Street protesters have moved to the center of political discourse.”

Janet Robinson former NY Times CEO

When a failed CEO receives a $15 million golden parachute at the exact moment when Times foreign correspondents who put their lives on the line covering war are having their pensions frozen, isn’t it worthy of comment? And what of the moral implications of a company that extracts ever more concessions from its unions while holding executives to no apparent standard? “I feel that the gap between what Janet Robinson will be leaving with, and what we are being offered, is simply wrong,” wrote the paper’s domestic correspondent Tamar Lewin in a collection of open letters to management.

Shouldn’t proletarian warrior Paul Krugman (whose name at this writing is conspicuously absent from the http://www.saveourtimes.com/) workers’ petition, weigh in on the injustice? A few weeks ago Krugman wrote, “Wealthy Americans who benefit hugely from a system rigged in their favor react with hysteria to anyone who points out just how rigged the system is.”

As the 1,200-head Times newsroom staff prepares for more job cuts while Robinson draws a lavish fee for nebulous consulting efforts, doesn’t the Times system seem as rigged as any? Yet the wealthy Americans who run the New York Times simply aren’t interested in publishing any stories about the dispute they’re having with their own worker bees. Maybe we’ll read about the quarrel in the Occupy Wall Street Journal.

Times management will, of course, win this and every other dispute with its employees, who two years ago accepted a five percent pay cut. Unlike mere corporate drones, the priests and priestesses of the Times are fanatics who willingly serve in a holy cause. Company executives could announce a new salary policy in which reporters and commentators pay for the right to work for the paper, and the end product would look about the same.

Consider, for instance, this posting by video journalist Gabe Johnson: “The Times is compensating an executive at the expense of the rank and file, the very behavior that we criticize in our editorial pages. I am confident, nevertheless, that we can all find a way out of this struggle together. This is a wonderful and rare institution and you have made difficult and wise decisions in the past.” In other words: Whatever you say, boss. It might as well be one of the citizen-slaves of Kim Jong-un talking.

www.forbes.com

NABET-CWA Reaches Tentative Agreement With NBC Universal!!

2012-01-13T14:47:00.000-05:00

NABET-CWA/NBCU NEGOTIATIONS
Washington, DC
BULLETIN #31
January 12, 2012

The NABET-CWA Network Negotiating Committee has reached a tentative agreement with NBC Universal on a new contract to replace the Master Agreement which expired on March 31, 2009. This contract offer is the result of numerous bargaining sessions which took place over the past five weeks in New York, and has the unanimous recommendation of the Union’s Bargaining Committee. The new contract, when ratified, will cover approximately 2500 staff and daily hire employees working as broadcast technicians, news writers, building, air conditioning and plant maintenance personnel, staging services personnel, and couriers at various Company Network and TV station operations in New York, Chicago, Burbank and Washington D.C., including NBC News and NBC Sports. The new contract will run through March 31, 2015.

While complete details of the contract offer will be made available within the next few days, this package contains a number of improvements from NBCU’s July 25, 2011, offer in the areas of economics and job security. The wage offer contains a total of 8% in wage increases over the next three years (2.75%, 2.75%, and 2.5%) beginning on April 1, 2012, in addition to a signing bonus effective upon ratification. In the area of job security, the new contract provides numerous layoff protections for staff employees, and calls for the conversion of a number of daily hire positions into full-time staff positions at each office of the Company. The contract offer also extends the jurisdiction of the Master Agreement to the secondary digital channel operations of WNBC-TV, WRC-TV, WMAQ-TV, and KNBC-TV.

NABET-CWA Locals 11 (New York), 31 (Washington, D.C.), 41 (Chicago) and 53 (Los Angeles) will be conducting ratification voting over the next few weeks, and the votes will be tallied by February 10, 2012. The Locals will also be conducting membership meetings and providing further information on this contract offer during the ratification process.

In the meantime, we remind you to ignore all rumors.

In Solidarity,

NABET-CWA Network Negotiating Committee:

Ed McEwan - President Emeritus, Local 11
Rich McDermott - Vice President, Local 31
Charles G. Braico - President, Local 41
Steve Ross - President, Local 53
James C. Joyce - President, NABET-CWA

Ossining Inaugurates Town, Village Officials, Including Bob Daraio, New Village Trustee

2012-01-03T11:43:00.001-05:00

Posted on January 3, 2012 by Examiner Media

The village and Town of Ossining kicked off the New Year by inaugurating village and town elected officials.

Bob Daraio and Manuel Quezada joined the Ossining Village Board while Eric Blaha joined the Ossining Town Board. Geoffrey Harter kicked off his sixth term on the town board.

Sue Donnelly took over as Ossining’s new town supervisor in place of Catherine Borgia. She was inaugurated as Westchester County Legislator of District 9, which represents Ossining, Croton, and parts of Cortlandt and Peekskill.

Daraio said he was very excited begin his service on the village board. In preparation for his term, Daraio sat in on budget meetings throughout November, learning how the village operates.

“I watched every department head justify ever nickel being spent,” Daraio said. “I was so impressed with how much they really care. It gives me great hope for the future.”

Quezada said he plans on giving 150 percent to the village board. Quezada, an Ecuadorian, said he looks forward to representing Ossining’s burgeoning Ecuadorian community.

“It means a lot to me,” Quezada said. “I look forward to working with the village board and improving what we have done.”

Blaha said joining the town board was a great way to begin his 2012 and said he is looking forward to serve.

“I am excited to get started,” Blaha said. “I hope to see more of the people in this room.”

For Harter, inaugurations have become old hat for him, though he said his sixth inauguration was just as exciting as his first.

“I enjoy it,” Harter said. “This is the fun part of town government. On Tuesday we get back to work.”

Borgia said she was grateful to everyone that helped her in her campaign, and is happy to leave the town in good shape.

“I was sad to leave a job I love, but I am excited for this new challenge,” Borgia said. “I am feeling optimistic.”

By Sam Barron

Definition of Irony: Sam Zell Sues Former Tribune Shareholders for Money Owed

2011-12-21T23:31:00.004-05:00

By chicagoist.com

Does anyone remember what Sam Zell was reported to have told Tribune Co. shareholder employees around the time of his 2007 buyout of the company? No? Let's remind you: “I’ve said repeatedly that no matter what happens in this transaction, my lifestyle won’t change. Yours, on the other hand, could change dramatically if we get this right.”

We now know that Zell didn't get it right and his lifestyle hasn't changed, if his recent purchase of the Elysian Hotel is any indication. But that didn't stop Zell from filing two lawsuits against former Tribune Co. shareholders to recoup $225 million.

The suits, filed by the Zell-controlled company EGI-TRB LLC, makes clear that Zell still believes the buyout was legitimate, but hedges his bets should a federal bankruptcy judge rule the buyout as fraudulent.

Zell owns a $225 million Tribune note, which makes him a creditor and he wants to preserve his rights to collect what he can, should the judge rule the buyout was a fraudulent conveyance. It's a genius move, yet devilish at the same time.

The irony here is so clear a blind man could see it, given that Zell moved forward with the heavily leveraged buyout and breached his fiduciary duty in the process, making him Public Enemy No. 1 in the eyes of the former shareholders. But these lawsuits can also serve as yet another reason why Zell's whistling past the graveyard, and that his lifestyle won't change.

Contact the author of this article or email tips@chicagoist.com with further questions, comments or tips.

Sam Zell sues former Tribune shareholders

In a strange twist even by the standards of the tangled Tribune Co. bankruptcy, billionaire Sam Zell filed two suits against the company's former shareholders seeking to claw back proceeds from the failed leveraged buyout he led in 2007.

The suits, filed in Cook County Circuit Court by Zell affiliate EGI-TRB, piggyback on allegations by Tribune creditors that the debt-laden $8.2-billion buyout was a fraudulent conveyance, meaning it left the owner of the Los Angeles Times, KTLA Channel 5, Chicago Tribune and other media assets insolvent from the start.

That Zell is suing alongside the creditors is ironic given that he has been a principal target of their ire.

Creditors have contended that as architect of the deal and chairman of Tribune's board, Zell breached his fiduciary duty by pushing forward with the deal.

But because he owns a $225-million Tribune note, Zell is also a creditor and filed his suits Monday in that capacity.

The suits make plain Zell's belief that the fraudulent conveyance claims lack merit and that shareholders who benefited from the buyout should be entitled to their proceeds.

But if a judge were to disagree, Zell wants to preserve his rights as a creditor to collect his share of any claw-backs from shareholders, the suits said.

Zell attorney David Bradford said that his client's real aim in filing the suits is to gain leverage in his attempts to persuade the creditors to settle their disputes.

mdoneal@tribune.com

TAKE ACTION NOW ON EQUAL PAY FOE WOMEN!

2011-12-19T12:12:00.000-05:00

Women Retail Workers Deserve Equal Pay for Equal work!

Retailers are paying female employees significantly less than male employees, according to new data released by the City University of New York and the Retail Action Project. Because retail is a growing industry that predominantly employs women, hundreds of thousands of women workers will be working long hours this holiday shopping season for less pay.

TAKE ACTION NOW

When hundreds of stock, sales, cashier, and workers at national retail companies in New York City were recently surveyed about their wages and other benefits, it was discovered the median wage gap between women and men was the difference between $9.00/hr and $10.50/hr. For low-wage hourly workers, that difference of 14% adds up fast. Further, women were found to be less likely than male co-workers to be promoted, or to have health benefits. This has huge implications for women's health, as uninsured and underinsured women are less likely to receive routine care that can be lifesaving. Furthermore, taxpayers are subsidizing retail giants whose low-wage employees qualify for public benefits.

Please share this link with your friends and colleagues!

Regards,

Carrie Gleason
Retail Action Project
140 West 31st Street 2nd floor
New York, NY, 10001
646-490-5925 phone
646-490-5930 fax

carrie@retailactionproject.org

We are starting a campaign to put pressure on many retail trades associations to address gender inequalities. Please take a moment to sign this petition and forward it on to your friends, peers and families.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND

2011-12-16T13:16:00.000-05:00

By Alyssa Rosenberg

If you’re in New York on Dec. 17 and 18, and if you like either my writing on pop culture and economic inequality and the recession, or you like progressivism and online organizing, you should come to Netroots New York. I’ll be speaking at lunch on Dec. 17, and the list of speakers and panels is impressive and getting bigger every day. For those of you who haven’t been, I found my trip to Netroots in Minnesota this summer to be really useful spur to my thinking, both politically and artistically: the posts I’ve written about Muslim archetypes in popular culture and Joe Arpaio as performance artist came out of sessions I attended there. And Netroots New York has a good deal on now: if you pay the full registration fee of $100, someone else can register with you for $25.

And since I’m going to be in town, how about a New York commenter meetup? If you actually go to the conference, I will buy you a drink. If you don’t, you should come out anyway. Let’s say 7:30 on Saturday, Dec. 17, with a tentative location of Union Square. If someone has bar recommendations in the area, holler. Otherwise, I’ll pick something. And let me know in comments if you think you’ll be there.

CUNY SPS Spotlights Robert Daraio MALS Graduate

2011-12-15T12:42:00.001-05:00

**The SPS Alumni Connect E-Bulletin**

The monthly newsletter for SPS Graduates

This month we would like to spotlight, Bob Daraio, an alumnus of the Labor Studies graduate degree program.

Masters in Labor Studies alumnus Robert Daraio '11 was elected in November to the five-person Board of Trustees for the Village of Ossining, New York, a community of 25,000 people an hour north of New York City. Filling one of two vacant seats, Daraio begins his two-year term on January 1, 2012.

Daraio was one of 15 students in the first graduating class of the MALS program at the Joseph S. Murphy Institute, part of the CUNY School of Professional Studies.

"My experience at Murphy is certainly part and parcel of what prepared me for the job," said Daraio.

As a Trustee he will work with the Mayor of Ossining to consolidate public service departments—a process that includes renegotiating contracts with the workers' unions.

Daraio began his studies at the Murphy Institute in 2010, after retiring from a 33 year career as a television broadcast engineer. Being active in the three unions that represent workers in the technical fields of the entertainment industry, IATSE, IBEW, and NABET-CWA, showed him how much more there was to learn about labor unions and their history.

"I didn't know nearly enough," he said. "Murphy was exactly what I needed for that." For his Master's thesis Daraio proposed a reorganization of the labor unions representing television workers to respond to the new shape of the industry.

Daraio also learned a lesson in solidarity: his candidacy had the overwhelming support of local unions and the Westchester-Putnam Central labor Body..

"I just can't thank everybody at Murphy enough,"Daraio said. "I know the friends I made there will always be in my life."

Congratulations Bob!

BIO: Bob Daraio is the Recording Secretary for the New York Broadcast Trades Council, an organization made up of unions with collective bargaining agreements with N.Y. broadcast TV stations. Bob represents NABET-CWA Local 16 on the New York City Central Labor Council-AFL-CIO.

Bob is the moderator of Broadcast Union News, a clearing center for information of interest to people working in television, film, print/electronic media, and theater. A place where AEA, AFTRA, IATSE, IBEW, CWA-NABET, DGA, SAG, Newspaper Guild, WGA, and non-represented entertainment industry workers can share information with an eye towards improving wages, benefits, and working conditions for all.
broadcastunionnews@blogspot.com

Robert Daraio worked at WPIX as a staff video engineer from June 1999 to May 2010, following a 22-year career as a freelance camera, robotics, video, audio, and videotape technician. His news, sports, and entertainment clients include CBS, NBC, FOX5, TBS, ABC, UPN9, WPIX, WNET, MSG, CNN, CNNfn, HBO, Showtime, MTV, VH1, CTW, NEP, Unitel, MTI, ESPN, and the National Geographic Society.

Bob has been a video assist technician for hundreds of commercials and coordinated video effects for feature films including the Rozie Perez and Patti Lupone independent film, “24 Hour Woman” and “For Love Of The Game” with Kevin Costner for Universal Pictures.

In 2002 the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences honored Bob for his video and robotic camera work on the Emmy Award winning “The WB11 News At 10”.

As an IATSE Local One stagehand, bob served as a swing props, electrics, and deck sound Tech for the Broadway productions of "She Loves Me" and "Company".

As a trade unionist, Bob has served as an IBEW Local 1212 Shop Steward, and on the NABET Local 15 and IATSE Local 644 and 600 Executive Boards. He served two terms on the New York City Central Labor Council of the AFL/CIO . Bob is one of an elite few who have held elective office in all three of New York’s film, television, and theatrical, technical employee unions.

Bob graduated in the 1st 4-year class in Theatre Technology with a BFA from SUNY Purchase. and did graduate work at NYU in Arts Administration. Recently he graduated on June 7, 2011 with an MA in Labor Studies program from the CUNY Murphy Institute for Worker Education.

Bob spent his summers during college traveling with "The Circus Kingdom", a youth circus program run by Rev. L.David Harris made up of college students from across the U.S.A. that toured throughout the U.S. and Canada. During his senior year at Purchase, Bob founded "The No Elephant Circus". TNEC operated under the Actor's Equity Association Theatre For Young Audience contract from 1977 to 1990, touring an average of 126 cities in 15 States annually.

Bob is a Coast Guard Licensed Master of 50 Ton Vessels with the Sail and Towing Endorsements, a U.S. Coast Guard certified Port Engineer, and a Coast Guard Auxiliary Boat Crew member and Vessel Examiner..

Bob is a member of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), the United States Coast Guard Auxiliary, and is a Trustee of the Village of Ossining, New York, where he lives with his wife Gayle, an IATSE Local 764 member working in wardrobe for Broadway, TV, and film. Gayle is currently on the running crew of "Sister Act".

SPS Alumni are doing amazing things all of the time. If you would like to nominate a fellow alum or yourself to feature, please email Kareem Mumford, Marketing and Outreach Associate, at kmumford@gc.cuny.edu, with the subject line: Alumni Spotlight.

Crazy Day at NLRB: Shutdown Averted, Boeing Case Settled

2011-12-07T16:57:00.000-05:00

by Mike Elk

WASHINGTON D.C.—In one of the most tense votes ever held in the history of the National Labor Relations board, today the federal agency voted to proceed with enacting a new rule to curtail employers’ ability to appeal workplace unionization elections before they are held.The tension was in part due to GOP NLRB Member Brian Hayes threat to resign in protest of the vote, as I reported last week.

His resignation would have effectively shut down the agency, because it would have lost a quorum of members needed to issue rulings.

The NLRB voted to move forward with a limited portion of a union election reform rule related to eliminating pre-union election voter eligibility determination appeals that currently delay union elections. Under the rule, such appeals would be held after a union election is already held. Now the rule will be prepared for final “publication,” after which time it will be voted on again.

“The vast majority of NLRB-supervised elections, about 90 percent, are held by agreement of the parties—employees, union and employer—in an average of 38 days from the filing of a petition. The amendments I propose would not affect those agreed-to elections” NLRB Chairman Mark Pearce said today. He continued:

Rather, the amendments would apply to the minority of elections which are held up by needless litigation and disputes which need not be resolved prior to an election. In these contested elections, employees have to wait an average of 101 days to cast a ballot. And as several employees testified at our hearing in July, that period can be disruptive and painful for all involved.

Hayes had threatened to resign because he felt that the process and traditions of the NLRB were not being followed in the run up to consideration of the rule change. He said was not consulted properly as the agency reviewed 65,000 comments received about the rule, and that he did not have proper time to issue a dissenting rule change, among other things.

Hayes later explained why he did not resign from the NLRB, saying, “First, it’s not in my nature to be obstructionist. Second, as a practical matter, my resignation might not mute the issue."

Lastly, however, and most importantly, I believe resignation would cause the very same harm and collateral damage to the reputation of this agency and to the interests of its constituents as would the issuance of a controversial rule without three affirmative votes and in the wake of a flawed decisional process. I cannot be credibly critical of the latter and engage myself in the former.”

Polarizing Boeing case finally settled

In other news—but very much related to the NLRB being a target of Republicans—the Machinists Union (IAM) and Boeing have settled their dispute, which resulted in a high-profile NLRB complaint filed against Boeing for illegal retaliation against striking union members. The IAM and the company reached agreement on a new four-year contract, which contains language ensuring that production of the 737 Max airliner will be in Renton, Wash.

IAM District Lodge 751 President Tom Wroblewski said that “if union members vote to approve the deal in the coming weeks, the union would inform the NLRB that it has no further grievances with Boeing,” the AP reported. The contract agreement was reached 10 months before the union’s current contract with Boeing expires, which is highly unusual. The contract also reportedly allows for pay and benefit increases over its four years.

NLRB General Counsel Lafe Solomon said: “The tentative agreement announced today between Boeing and the Machinists Union is a very significant and hopeful development. The tentative agreement is subject to ratification by the employees, and, if ratified, we will be in discussions with the parties about the next steps in the [complaint] process.”

A Boeing spokesman “called the new contract with the union ‘a starting point of a new relationship’ with the union,” the AP reported.

If the union drops its lawsuit against Boeing, the NLRB will almost definitely stop pursuing its complaint against the company.

However, Capitol Hill observers still expect congressional Republicans to continue issuing attacks on the NLRB. “The war against the workers’ rights has been going on for more than a year and I do not think they will stop,” said Aaron Albright, a spokesman for Democrats on the House Education and Workforce Committee. “I do not think they will stop their obsession with breaking up workers’ unions.”

Mike Elk

Earlier in the day, at a special forum on the attacks on the National Labor Relations Board and workers’ rights sponsored by the National Labor Relations Board, University of Texas Labor Law Professor Jules Getman said the attack on the NLRB was “an almost brilliant strategy by the right wing. Attacks on workers are unpopular as in Ohio, but attacks on governments are fairly popular. So if you can make it about government, you can succeed in taking away the rights of workers.”

Mike Elk is an In These Times Staff Writer and a regular contributor to the labor blog Working In These Times. He can be reached at mike@inthesetimes.com.

Talking Union is a project of the labor network of Democratic Socialists of America. We will report on the activities and views of DSA and Young Democratic Socialists of America labor activists. We seek to be a place for a broad range of labor activists to discuss ideas for the renewal and strengthening of the labor movement. If you’d like to submit an article or blog post, email us at talkingunion@gmail.com. Tell us a little about yourself, too. Posts represent the opinion of their author and not necessarily those of the Talking Union blog, the DSA labor network, or Democratic Socialists of America. To join DSA, click here.

DSA members, join the DSA Labor discussion list.

Update Shows Donnelly, Daraio, Quezada, Tawil Won, Dems Sweep In Ossining

2011-11-11T13:16:00.000-05:00

by Tien-Shun Lee

The Daily Ossining

Ossining's New Trustees Manuel Quezada and Robert Daraio

OSSINING, N.Y. – Sue Donnelly won the town supervisor race, Robert Daraio and Manuel Quezada won the village trustees race and John Fried and Mike Tawil won the town justices race, updated tallies from the county Board of Elections show.

Sue Donnelly and Catherine Borgia

According to the updated Board of Elections website, Donnelly, a Democrat, got 2,682 out of 5,162, or 52 percent of votes, while Republican opponent Peter Tripodi IV got 2,480, or 48 percent of votes for town supervisor.

Tripodi said he was still waiting for more accurate numbers to come in before he makes any comment on winning or losing.

"Those are the numbers that were called out by the people at the polling places. The Ossining clerk's numbers are different and more accurate," said Tripodi. "I'm going to wait for everything to come in before I say anything."

Tripodi said that Town Clerk Mary Ann Roberts' numbers showed Donnelly got 170 more votes than him and there were 185 absentee ballots that haven't been counted yet.

In the race for two village trustee seats, Democrat Robert Daraio got 1,525 out of 5,507, or 28 percent of votes, and running mate Manuel Quezada got 1,495, or 27 percent of votes, according to the county Board of Elections.

Republican opponent Robert Fritsche got 1,243, or 23 percent of votes and Republican Robert Terilli got 1,244, or 23 percent of votes.

Newly Elected Ossining trustee Manuel Quezada

Quezada is the first Ecuadorean ever to hold an elected office in Westchester and he said he is excited about winning.

"I'm looking forward to move forward to make a better community for everybody," he said. "One of the things I'm going to do is go to meetings, the majority of them in which the budget will be discussed, and try to learn and understand the financial situation of the village of Ossining. I'm going to take it step by step at first."

Newly Elected Judge Mike Tawil

In the race between three candidates for two town justice seats, the county Board of Elections website shows that incumbent John Fried got 4,643 out of 9,721, or 48 percent of votes, while Mike Tawil got 2,582, or 27 percent of votes, and John Mangialardi got 2,496, or 26 percent of votes.

"I'm cautiously optimistic that the numbers will remain in my favor," said Tawil, who was endorsed by the Democrats. "I want to thank everyone who came out for me in the elections. It was pretty tough with only one line, but I think I pulled it off."

Broadcast Union News Note: In Westchester's 9th District, Catherine Borgia (D), Ossining Town Supervisor won the County Legislator seat with 55% of the vote over former Croton Trustee Sue Konig who received 45%.

Eric Blaha, Geoff Harter, Bob Daraio, and Manuel Quezada on election night

In the election for Ossining Town Council, 20 year incumbent Geoff Harter (D) with 28% and newcomer Eric Blaha (D) with 27% won over their Republican challengers Kim Izzarelli(R) and Steve Dewey, who each garnered 23% of votes in the race for the two Town Council spots.

Robert Daraio wins Ossining Trustee Election

2011-11-10T11:46:00.002-05:00

Well the election is over, Manny Quezada and I won the two open Village Trustee spots in Ossining.. The Ossining Dems took 8 of 9 races this year. Below are the Trustee numbers.

Ossining Village Trustee Vote Count

Daraio 1525 28%

Quezada 1495 27%

Terelli 1244 23%

Fritsche 1243 23%

I would like to thank Mayor Bill Hanauer, Town Supervisor Catherine Borgia, Katie Goriycki, Thomasina Laidley, Bill Burton, the Ossining Democratic Committee, all the fabulous Blitz Kids, my fellow candidates, family, friends, and supporters for a great campaign.

Thank you to all the professors, staff, and fellow students at the CUNY Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies program for helping to fill the gaps in my skill set and prepare me for the new challenges ahead. You patience and insight is appreciated far more than I can say.

Newly Elected Ossining Trustees Manuel Quezada and Bob Daraio

I also would like to take a moment to thank all the AEA, AFTRA, DGA, IATSE, IBEW, NABET-CWA, and WGAE Brothers and Sisters who endorsed and supported my campaign, both personally and financially. I'd also like to thank the Westchester-Putnam Central Labor Body for their endorsement.

The labor movement can take back the Democratic Party and get a real voice in government only by running labor candidates. Three out of five Trustees in Ossining are now trade unionists. Solidarity!

Fraternally,

Bob Daraio, Trustee
Village of Ossining

Robert R. Daraio

Recording Secretary

New York Broadcast Trades Council

Delegate NYCCLC-AFL-CIO

NABET-CWA Local 16

Judge Rejects Both Tribune Bankruptcy Plans

2011-10-31T22:07:00.000-04:00

By Lucas Shaw

The Wrap

U.S. bankruptcy judge Kevin J. Carey has rejected Tribune Co.’s plan for reorganizing the company so that it can emerge from bankruptcy. A rival proposal from Tribune creditors did not pass muster either.

Tribune, a media empire that includes newspapers like the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune, as well as more than 20 broadcasting properties, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in December of 2008. That came a year after real-estate tycoon Sam Zell took the company private.

Carey began his 126-page opinion with a story, “The Scorpion and the Fox.” He said there is no moral to it, but that it reveals an “inescapable facet of human character: the willingness to visit harm upon others, even at one’s own peril.”

He then detailed the many ways in which neither plan could settle a dispute that is now almost three years old, and threatened to appoint a trustee to resolve the case if neither side can reach a suitable resolution.

Under both plans, JP Morgan and other lenders would be the majority owners.

Judge rejects reorganization plans for Tribune

BY DAVID ROEDER, Business Reporter

Chicago Sun-Times

October 31, 2011

Because of a ruling issued on Halloween, Tribune Co.’s “deal from hell” lives on.

A federal bankruptcy judge Monday rejected two competing plans for the reorganization of Tribune, the Chicago-based publishing and broadcasting company that was driven into Chapter 11 by mogul Sam Zell’s ill-timed and over-leveraged buyout.

Zell called the $8.2 billion sale the “deal from hell” upon its consummation in 2007.

But that was before the real fun even started. A year later, the Tribune, saddled with $13 billion in debt and with advertising in a steep, industry-wide fall, filed for bankruptcy. In the three years since then, creditors have wrestled over who gets what in a reorganized company and how to handle lawsuits against the parties who approved the original deal.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Kevin Carey said in a 126-page opinion that he could approve neither of the two plans presented to him. His ruling suggested that the company could be in for months of costly court proceedings and uncertainty about its fate. Many observers suspect that when creditors do get control, they will break up its properties and perhaps sell the broadcast stations, which generate the bulk of the profit.

But Carey tried to downplay any conclusion that his ruling would invite more delay. The Tribune, he wrote, “must promptly find an exit door to this Chapter 11 proceeding. The court is equally resolute that, if a viable exit strategy does not present itself with alacrity, and despite any disruption to management, as well as the added cost and delay this might inevitably occasion, the court intends to consider, on its own motion, whether a Chapter 11 trustee should be appointed.”

Tribune owns the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, other major newspapers and more than 20 broadcasting stations, including WGN television and radio. Company spokesman Gary Weitman said late Monday, “We are reviewing the judge’s decision and will have no comment until we have finished studying it.”

Both completing plans would have left Tribune under the control of JPMorgan Chase & Co. and hedge funds Angelo, Gordon & Co. and Oaktree Capital Management, the leading unsecured creditors. But a plan advocated by other debt holders, including Aurelius Capital Management LP, seeks to recover more money in litigation.

Aurelius is known for playing legal hardball.

Aurelius was emboldened by the findings of a court-appointed examiner, who ruled last year that part of the Zell buyout may have been a “fraudulent conveyance” that automatically rendered Tribune bankrupt.

Carey rejected both plans for several reasons, some technical, but spoke more favorably of the leading creditors’ proposal. He said it provides Tribune “with more certainty regarding preservation of estate value and a better foundation for revitalizing business operations.”

A hearing in the case is scheduled for Nov. 22 in Wilmington, Del.

NBC’s 10 Owned Stations Growing Newsgathering; 130+ New Jobs Planned

2011-10-31T12:28:00.000-04:00

By Chris Ariens on October 31, 2011

NBC Universal has announced it is hiring for more than 130 positions across the 10 Owned & Operated stations.

“People will always need local news and information. How they get it will change,” says Valari Staab, president of the NBC Owned Television Stations group. “Television has shown it’s done nothing but increase, not decline, with what’s happening with the Internet.”

Ahead of Comcast’s acquisition of NBCU earlier this year, the companies met with the FCC to explain their commitment to local news. In part, the company agreed to, “maintain at least the current level of news and information programming on NBC’s and Telemundo’s owned-and-operated (“O&O”) broadcast stations, and in some cases expand news and other local content.”

Staab, who was named president of the NBC Owned Television Stations group in April, announced what the expansion means:

Jim Watkins Offically Out at WPIX in New York

2011-10-31T12:18:00.001-04:00

By Merrill Knox on October 28, 2011

Nearly a month after FishbowlNY reported Jim Watkins was out the door at New York City CW-affiliate WPIX, the station has finally confirmed the longtime anchor’s departure.

“Jim Watkins and WPIX-TV have decided to end their relationship after 13 years and three Best Newscast Emmy Awards,” WPIX said in a statement.

The station has disputed the original report that Watkins had been fired and was no longer welcome in the WPIX building. For more details, visit FishbowlNY.

Anchor Jim Watkins Officially Ends Association With WPIX

By Jerry Barmash on October 28, 2011

The worst kept secret has finally been made official today. Veteran WPIX anchor Jim Watkins has left Channel 11 as FishbowlNY reported exclusively on September 30.

The station, in a statement, announced a parting of company with its longtime anchor, without explaining why.

“Jim Watkins and WPIX-TV have decided to end their relationship after 13 years and three Best Newscast Emmy Awards. PIX11 salutes Watkins’ years of service to the station and to the community during his time as a valued newscaster at the station. Jim bids a fond farewell to his many PIX co-workers over the years, especially Kaity Tong.”

It’s a different tone than we reported last month, when multiple sources said Watkins was fired earlier, and he was not permitted back in the building.

News director Bill Carey, though, was quick to squelch our report, saying Watkins “remains employed by WPIX.”

As Tong immediately assumed Watkins weekend anchor duties, people with knowledge of the situation told FishbowlNY that his name remained on the station’s weekly schedule.

However, sources have maintained that Watkins was dismissed.

FishbowlNY has made several attempts to speak with Watkins throughout this four-week ordeal. Once again, though, our interview request was turned down today.

Watkins joined WPIX in 1998, and had co-anchored the weeknight newscasts until Jodi Applegate was hired in October 2010.

VIDEO - Fox NY News Crew Beaten By Police While Covering Occupy Wall Street - #OWS

2011-10-28T12:22:00.001-04:00

Here's footage of last Wednesday night's NYPD melee near Wall Street. This clip provides a timeline and explains how the situation turned violent. Runs 90 seconds.

Source - Media Bistro

A WNYW-Fox news crew was maced and beaten by police on Wednesday night while covering the Occupy Wall Street protests.

Reporter Dick Brennan and photographer Roy Isen got caught in the middle of an altercation between police officers and a group of protesters, at the end of a day spent covering the ongoing demonstrations in lower Manhattan. Brennan was struck in the stomach with a baton and Isen was hit in the eyes with pepper spray.

“Since the arrests over the weekend, these demonstrations have been mostly peaceful. That’s until tonight,” Brennan reported. “And I can tell you because my photographer and I got caught in the middle of things when the pepper spray and the night sticks started flying.”

Related Stories:

GRAPHIC VIDEO - NYPD Beats Wall Street Protesters In Baton Wielding Melee, Dozens Arrested

VIDEO - NYPD Cop On Wall Street Brags: "My Little Nightstick Is Going To Get A Workout Tonight, Hopefully"

Stop Police Attacks On Working Journalists

2011-10-27T18:53:00.001-04:00

By now, much of the nation has seen stories and images from this week's Occupy Oakland protests, which ended with police in riot gear and protestors struggling through clouds of tear gas.

Less visible is what happens at the other end of the lens: The working journalists, both freelance and staff, who put themselves in harm's way to ensure the story reached the larger public.

Journalists know that their jobs can be dangerous. What they don't expect is to be detained, attacked or otherwise interfered with by police -- as happened to at least three journalists in Oakland this week. All were clearly wearing press passes and carrying professional photo gear.

Please stand with working journalists and tell Oakland officials that this is unacceptable: Police must learn to recognize and respect a press pass.

Click through to send a letter to City Hall, and please help us spread the word by forwarding this e-mail, or by tweeting or sharing the link on Facebook.

The Newspaper Guild • 501 3rd Street NW • Washington, DC 20001 • 202-434-1100

Huge NLRB Victory Restores Union Rights to NABET-CWA Represented NBC 'Content Producers'

2011-10-27T18:38:00.000-04:00

In a resounding victory for NABET-CWA members, an NLRB ruling out of Region 2 in New York City orders NBC to reinstate the bargaining rights of "content producers," a title the network created three years ago to strip union representation from nearly 100 photographers, editors and writers.

"On behalf of our affected members and their families, we are extremely pleased with this outcome," NABET-CWA President Jim Joyce said. "NBC wasted shameful amounts of money to pay for outside legal counsel and consultants just so that it could take away union-negotiated wages and benefits from its workers, many of whom have been loyal NBC employees and NABET-CWA members for years."

NBC tried to claim that it was consolidating work and creating new, non-union jobs. But the ruling said testimony at hearings this year in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington, D.C., made it clear that so-called content producers were doing the same work they'd always done, just with a different title.

"The evidence warrants the conclusion that content producers perform the same basic functions previously performed by bargaining unit employees," said Elbert Tellem, NLRB acting director for Region 2 (New York).

Because NABET-CWA filed the cases as "unit clarification," NBC has limited rights of appeal. Procedure allows for a full NLRB hearing but no further appeals in federal court, Joyce said.

The decision affects both NABET members who lost their bargaining rights, as well as new employees hired as content producers. Their rights are expected to be restored without delay, Joyce said, even while NBC pursues an NLRB appeal. Content producers at NBC and NBC-owned stations in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles are directly affected by the ruling.

The decision comes as NABET and NBC begin the fourth year of negotiations for a new contract. In August, NABET members overwhelmingly rejected an NBC proposal that would have rolled back seniority and benefit provisions, among other concessions.

The NLRB ruling that will restore union rights to about 100 NBC content producers was a big boost this week for NABET-CWA members as they continue their fight for a fair contract at the network. Pictured are Local 52031 members outside the Washington, D.C., studios.

Judge OKs $32 Million Settlement for Tribune Employees in the Defunked ESOP

2011-10-26T17:36:00.000-04:00

by Jim Romenesko

A federal judge has granted preliminary approval of the $32 million settlement — announced in August — for former Los Angeles Times auto writer Dan Neil and Tribune employees. The final hearing is set for January 30. The plaintiffs contended that the leveraged buyout that resulted in creation of an employee ownership plan violated federal pension law. Tribune staffers became owners of the company when it was taken private by Sam Zell in 2007. The company filed for bankruptcy protection one year later.

Plaintiffs’ press release

FEDERAL JUDGE APPROVES $32 MILLION SETTLEMENT FOR FORMER LA TIMES PULITZER PRIZE WINNER AND EMPLOYEES OF SAM ZELL’S BANKRUPT TRIBUNE COMPANY

Hundreds Of Writers, Editors And Other Employees Will Recapture Money For Their Employee Stock Ownership Plan

CHICAGO – Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois granted preliminary approval of a $32 million settlement in the class action case of Dan Neil, et al. v. Samuel Zell, et al. The defendants in this case are GreatBanc Trust Company, Samuel Zell and EGI-TRB, LLC. Tribune Company was dropped from the case after its bankruptcy filing, but they are a party to the settlement. The Tribune Company includes the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, the Baltimore Sun, other major newspaper and media outlets. The final hearing on the settlement is on January 30, 2012.

The lawsuit, which was filed in November 2008 following the purchase of the Tribune Co. by Sam Zell and his company, raised claims on behalf of participants and beneficiaries of the Tribune Company Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP).

The lawsuit challenged the Leveraged ESOP buy-out of the company. The complaint alleged Defendants breached their fiduciary duties by causing the ESOP to pay more than fair market value for the Tribune stock purchased in April, 2007 by Sam Zell.

Also alleged was that Defendants caused the ESOP to purchase unregistered stock at a time when the Tribune stock was trading on the public market and engaged in prohibited transactions under ERISA.

The U.S. Department of Labor commenced an investigation of the Leveraged ESOP Transaction and asserted claims against Tribune which were also raised.

Under the terms of the settlement, Tribune and GreatBanc will collectively pay the settlement amount of $32 million to the employees in the ESOP. The suit was handled by Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy of Burlingame, Meites, Mulder & Glink of Chicago, and Lewis, Fineberg, et al., of Oakland.

The lead plaintiffs were Dan Neil, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist formerly with the Los Angeles Times, and Eric Bailey, also a former Los Angeles Times journalist. Hundreds of writers, editors and other employees will recapture money for their ESOP.

Phil Gregory of Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy, LLP said, “This is a wonderful vindication for all the newspaper people who dedicate their careers to journalism only to have their retirement plans diminished by unscrupulous purchasers of their papers.”

The Case is Dan Neil, et al. v. Sam Zell, et al. (08-cv-06833) ND. ILL.

2011-10-25T11:24:00.002-04:00

The November 2011 Edition of the IATSE ORGANIZER now available

Bonuses Worthy of Protest for Gannett and Tribune Executives

2011-10-24T16:12:00.000-04:00

Why Not Occupy Newsrooms? By DAVID CARR

Almost two weeks ago, USA Today put its finger on why the Occupy Wall Street protests continued to gain traction. The bonus system has gone beyond a means of rewarding talent and is now Wall Street’s primary business,” the newspaper editorial stated, adding: “Institutions take huge gambles because the short-term returns are a rationale for their rich payouts. But even when the consequences of their risky behavior come back to haunt them, they still pay huge bonuses.”

Well thought and well put, but for one thing: If you were looking for bonus excess despite miserable operations, the best recent example I can think of is Gannett, which owns USA Today.

The week before the editorial ran, Craig A. Dubow resigned as Gannett’s chief executive. His short six-year tenure was, by most accounts, a disaster. Gannett’s stock price declined to about $10 a share from a high of $75 the day after he took over; the number of employees at Gannett plummeted to 32,000 from about 52,000, resulting in a remarkable diminution in journalistic boots on the ground at the 82 newspapers the company owns.

Never a standout in journalism performance, the company strip-mined its newspapers in search of earnings, leaving many communities with far less original, serious reporting.

Given that legacy, it was about time Mr. Dubow was shown the door, right? Not in the current world we live in. Not only did Mr. Dubow retire under his own power because of health reasons, he got a mash note from Marjorie Magner, a member of Gannett’s board, who said without irony that “Craig championed our consumers and their ever-changing needs for news and information.”

But the board gave him far more than undeserved plaudits. Mr. Dubow walked out the door with just under $37.1 million in retirement, health and disability benefits. That comes on top of a combined $16 million in salary and bonuses in the last two years.

And in case you thought they were paying up just to get rid of a certain way of doing business — slicing and dicing their way to quarterly profits — Mr. Dubow was replaced by Gracia C. Martore, the company’s president and chief operating officer. She was Mr. Dubow’s steady accomplice in working the cost side of the business, without finding much in the way of new revenue. She has already pocketed millions in bonuses and will now be in line for even more.

Forget about occupying Wall Street; maybe it’s time to start occupying Main Street, a place Gannett has bled dry by offering less and less news while dumping and furloughing journalists in seemingly every quarter.

It’s tempting to write off Gannett’s enrichment amid the ruins as anomalous.

But Gannett is not the only big media enterprise where the consequences of bad decisions land on everyone except those who made them. The Tribune Company, a chain of newspapers and television stations run into the ground by Sam Zell after he bought it in 2007, is paying out tens of millions of dollars in bonuses as part of a deal in which it would exit bankruptcy.

Over 4,000 people in the company lost their jobs, and the journalistic missions of formerly robust newspapers it operates — including The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune and The Baltimore Sun — have been curtailed. And even though Randy Michaels and some of his corporate fraternity brothers who operated the company into bankruptcy are gone, more than 600 managers who were there while the company cratered remain.

Not only do they have jobs while so many others were sent packing, but the remaining leadership will be eligible for a bonus pool from $26.4 million to $32.4 million under the current plan.

Through the magic of blunt force cost-cutting — about $800 million over the last three years, much of it in the form of layoffs — a lawyer for the senior creditors told the judge in charge of the bankruptcy case that the bankrupt enterprise would generate an estimated $517 million in cash flow for 2011.

Over the past three years, counting the payment scheduled for 2011, the bonuses could amount to $115 million, according to The Chicago Tribune. The drawn-out legal process hasn’t stopped lawyers and the current managers from picking the carcass clean. The Tribune story includes over leveraged purchases, feckless management and a culture of personal enrichment, all hallmarks of the Wall Street way that have left protesters enraged.

This is a not a finger-waving screed to suggest that some layoffs are more damaging than others just because they landed on people like me who type for a living.

(It’s worth noting that Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the publisher and chairman of The New York Times Company, and Janet Robinson, the president and chief executive, were criticized by various unions for a 2009 compensation package that cost a combined $12 million. It’s also worth noting that Mr. Sulzberger chose to forgo additional compensation in other years.)

The newspaper business is struggling, and those of us who have jobs are lucky to still have them. But how in the world could a board, any board, justify such huge payouts to media executives at a time like this? It’s not that any of them were flight risks, in need of incentive to stick out a bankruptcy. Most had no place to go, and even if they did, many would have trouble shaking off the taint of their previous tenure.

Peter Lewis, a former employee of both The Times and The Des Moines Register, which was bought and diminished by Gannett after he left the paper, ripped the Gannett bonuses on his blog “Words and Ideas” in summarizing an approach in which getting rid of jobs passes for a strategy.

“Can anyone argue that Gannett newspapers and journalism are better today, and that news consumers are better served?” he wrote.

“How did Mr. Dubow and Gannett serve the consumer?” Mr. Lewis continued. “They laid off journalists. They cut the pay of those who remained, while demanding that they work longer hours. They closed news bureaus. They slashed newsroom budgets. As revenue fell, and stock prices tanked, and product quality deteriorated, they rewarded themselves with huge pay raises and bonuses.”

Sure, he was talking about Gannett, but he could have been talking about the Tribune Company, or come to think of it, much of the American economy that used to make money by making things. Many newspaper companies are working hard against steep challenges to innovate into a new future, but Mr. Dubow and his team seemed content to just ride the collapse of the business.

No one, least of all me, is suggesting that running a newspaper company is a piece of cake. But the people in the industry who are content to slide people out of the back of the truck until it runs out of gas not only don’t deserve tens of millions in bonuses, they don’t deserve jobs.

The optics of the bonuses are far worse than the practical impact. Newspapers are asking their employees for shared sacrifice and their digital readers to begin paying. So, lucrative packages won’t cut it. As newspapers all over the country struggle to divine the meaning of the Occupy protests, some of the companies that own them might want to listen closely to see if there is a message there meant for them.

Entertainment Unions Join Occupy Wall Street

2011-10-10T16:09:00.000-04:00

On Wednesday, Members of labor unions joined the Occupy Wall Street protest in force. More than 6,000 union members rallied at Foley Square before marching down to Wall Street.

Local One Member Bob Daraio with Local 52 Member Eric Gerrity

IATSE Local One stagehands; Studio Mechanics from IATSE Local 52; Camera Operators from IATSE Local 600; Wardrobe crews from IATSE Local 764; FOX5 Broadcast Engineers from IATSE Local 798; and Designers from IATSE Local 829 marched along with Broadcast Engineers from IBEW Local 1212 and NABET-CWA Locals 11 and 16; WGAE Writers; Actors from SAG, AFTRA, AEA, and Musicians from Local 802.

Allison Kilkenny The Nation

Thousands of protesters gathered in Foley Square today as part of Occupy Wall Street’s largest event to date. Unions from the Transport Workers Union, SEIU 1199, and the United Federation of Teachers all joined the protest to voice their discontent at what they call a bailout of Wall Street, while working-class people are left to suffer under a system of austerity.

Ayman El-Sayed, a member of the nurses union, said he came to the protest to stand in solidarity with the Liberty Plaza activists. El-Sayed is having difficulty finding steady work in New York City, but he still tries to protest in between job-hunting.

“I come before work, I come after work when I can, but I find this Occupy Wall Street movement is important because it will help future workers: better benefits, get better jobs, get more stability, and not be neglected by their government, which bails out banks instead of bailing out workers.”

El-Sayed mentions the negative consequences of the city’s budget cuts, including the closing of the 400-bed St. Vincent Catholic Medical Centers, which sealed its doors back in April.

“I wanted to be a nurse to contribute to my community, so I could pay my mortgage, pay my bills, raise my kids, but also help people and help my community,” he explains before addressing the media’s negative depiction of some of the protesters as pot-smoking hippies engaging in an endless drum circle.

“God bless these youth who are out here, because while I’m at work, they can hold it down till I can get off work and come down and stand with them. Everybody plays a role. Even if some of them are hippies, they’re Americans. They have a right to speak their opinion. I don’t care how they dress or what they do,” he says.

El-Sayed mentions he doesn’t believe either political party represents his interests, or “normal working people’s interests.” In fact, he’d like to see an independent movement grow from OWS. “I believe in third parties. I just hope we can build something out of this movement here—an alternative to the two-party system”

Witnessing OWS’s evolution over the course of only a few weeks is truly something to behold. In the first few days of the movement, it was extremely difficult to find accurate information about what the protesters stood for, or what was planned for the movement that day, let alone over the span of a longer arc. Now, Liberty Plaza is neatly divided into sections: the greeting desk where you can see the day’s schedule; the supply drop-off area where supporters can leave clean blankets, sleeping bags, and clothing; and then there’s the food and media centers. The group even has a press team that mingles during events to address any questions the media might have.

OWS also has its own newspaper now, the Occupy Wall Street Journal, available as a .pdf file here, though some observers have criticized the publication for its almost entirely male perspective.

While many unions attended the event in an official capacity, I ran into a couple young men who attended the protest sporting their union gear, even though their own local hadn’t voted to officially throw their weight behind OWS.

As members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, William and Carlos wanted to stand in solidarity with the young people of Liberty Plaza even as their union leaders drag their feet. William declared his intention to do so because to do anything but come down to the protest would be “complete cowardice.”

“We believe the union movement should be more involved in this protest,” William says. “We’re out here to show a lot of us are grassroots, democratically minded, and we do want to bring a union face to this movement.”

William blames a certain degree of anti-protest fervor among union members on an inflated sense of machismo. According to him, ever since Vietnam, when hard hats flooded the streets for the sole purpose of beating up young protesting college students, unions have sometimes adopted a sense of hostility toward activist youths.

“There’s always been this macho culture,” he says, “but I think there’s a more progressive slant moving into the union right now. At least, the people I’ve spoken with on my job support what I’m doing. Not all of them took the pay cut to come here.” (William had to leave work three hours early and had to sacrifice the remainder of his day’s wages to do so).

Carlos’s boss asked him if he was going to “join the hippies” when he announced his intent to join OWS. “I was like, no, we’re part of the 99 percent. If you have any kind of debt whatsoever, you’re part of the 99 percent.”

William nods in agreement. “I consider myself a patriotic person, and this is a patriotic protest…. [The protesters are] not anti-America. They’re trying to save America.”

“It’s like a generation is calling and you’re not gonna answer it?” Carlos asks a hypothetical naysayer, sitting on the couch at home. “That’s all I have to say.”

Mark Mannis, Marge Harrison and Helene Mannis, three retired schoolteachers, stand together at Foley Square, the end point of the OWS march. Mark used to teach in Queens, and says he came to the protest to support young people. “In our generation, things have been very good to us. We’re union members. Everything we are today is because we’re union members, and kids don’t have any possibility to progress at all,” he says.

His companion, Marge, is a retired schoolteacher from Nassau County, and she came to take part in the infectious spirit of the movement.

“I’m just so thrilled that the young people in the occupation have just sent an electric jolt of optimism through people who have been organizing for years around Afghanistan, Iraq, the budget, the deficit, all these issues that we’re confronting,” she says, adding that the right to collectively bargain is an essential right because without it, “you’re just flailing around.”

Helene chimes in that she agrees. “I’ve been waiting for the young people to finally rise up and really realize how the right wing is destroying this country, and all the dreams that people had for having a great America and caring about other people, and doing what’s right: taking care of the weaker. Not just taking care of the rich and powerful and the rest of us just get the crumbs on the floor.”

Various right-wing websites have depicted the unions’ decisions to join OWS as a sign that the traditional vehicle of the left, labor, plans to hijack the movement to implement their dastardly plan of ensuring pension plans and healthcare for all workers.

However, OWS organizers don’t see that nefarious plan as being possible, or even, you know, real.

Jeff Smith, an OWS organizer, seemed confused at the idea. “I don’t think there’s any chance of that, frankly,” he says.

A member of the press team for Occupy Wall Street, Mark Bray, agrees. “If you just look at it logistically, you look at where we’re set up, you look at the park, you look at what we actually do on a day-by-day basis with the General Assemblies, I don’t know how they would do that,” he says. “They’re using Occupy Wall Street as a means to get their message out and we welcome that.”

Bankruptcy Judge Lets Tribune Co. Make Lofty Executive Bonus Payments, Again!

2011-10-10T14:49:00.000-04:00

By: John Clark

In a move that is sure to draw the ire of the Tribune Company’s critics, a bankruptcy judge in Delaware recently allowed Tribune Co. to distribute millions of dollars in bonuses to its top managers.

According to a report in the Washington Post, Tribune Co. justified its lavish bonuses by saying it needed to compensate its top employees for their efforts in keeping the company afloat while it trudged through bankruptcy proceedings.

The giant media company, which owns several newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times, faced a financial catastrophe in recent years as a shift in the media landscape undercut newspapers' traditional revenue streams.

With more content available for free or at little cost on the Internet, traditional newspapers have scrambled to compete with low-cost information sources.

In addition, the recent decrease in newspaper readership has led to a loss in advertisement, which has crippled the finances of major metropolitan newspapers like the Chicago Tribune.

In the midst of this financial crisis, the Tribune Co. filed for bankruptcy in 2008, shortly after a buyout of the company led by Sam Zell left Tribune Co. drowning in debt.

The newspaper company has been shedding jobs at a rapid pace over the past few years, which makes the recent round of bonuses a bit controversial, observers say.

Under the plan approved by the bankruptcy judge, Tribune Co. plans to distribute tens of millions of dollars to a few hundred top managers, provided that they meet certain performance objectives.

In the meantime, the bankruptcy court is weighing the merits of the company's proposed reorganization plan, which would likely shield it from payment demands by numerous creditors.

Critics of the proposed plan claim that the current reorganization plan would needlessly protect the lenders that funded the ill-conceived buyout of the company in 2008. Tribune Co.'s poorly timed bonus payments have only added to the frustrations shared by former employees of the company.

Thus, while the payment of bonuses during bankruptcy does not violate any bankruptcy law, it certainly hasn't helped the company's reputation in the court of public opinion.

The management incentive plan calls for some 640 employees to share $16 million to $42 million if they hit certain financial targets.

Despite continued under-performance in the publishing unit, Tribune Co. management is projecting it will be able to generate about $517 million in cash flow in 2011, $20 million more than originally projected

Tribune Settles $37.5 Mill Tax Claim Related to 2007 Leveraged Buyout For $ 7 Mill

2011-10-10T14:34:00.000-04:00

By Steven Church

Bloomberg Business Week

Tribune Co., the biggest media company in bankruptcy, agreed to pay the Internal Revenue Service $7 million to settle allegations that the company’s 2007 leveraged buyout violated U.S. tax law.

The settlement ends a fight over whether the company must pay $37.5 million to the IRS, which alleged that the company owed unpaid taxes related to its almost $13 billion leveraged buyout.

The deal “resolves a major outstanding claim against Tribune on very favorable terms to the debtors,” the company said in court papers filed today in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Delaware.

Tribune filed for bankruptcy in 2008, one year after billionaire Sam Zell led a buyout that added more than $8 billion in debt onto the Chicago-based company. Tribune owns newspapers including the Los Angeles Times the Chicago Tribune, along with television and radio stations.

Two groups of hedge funds are waiting for U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Kevin J. Carey to pick one of two competing plans to reorganize the company so it can leave bankruptcy.

The IRS claim was related to the structure of the deal, which was designed to avoid some federal taxes.

The bankruptcy case is In re Tribune Co., 08-bk-13141, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, District of Delaware (Wilmington).

--Editors: Mary Romano, Michael Hytha

To contact the reporter on this story: Steven Church in Wilmington at schurch3@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: John Pickering at jpickering@bloomberg.net

Over 100 NYPD Officers Refuse to Work in Support of Occupy Wall Street Movement

2011-10-03T12:42:00.000-04:00

The Occupy Wall Street movement issued the following statement on their website:
"Today we received unconfirmed reports that over one hundred blue collar police refused to come into work in solidarity with our movement. These numbers will grow. We are the 99 percent. You will not silence us."

The Occupy Wall Street movement is growing and has expanded to cover other cities, such as Los Angeles, CA and Chicago, IL, with numerous protests scheduled for other cities, such as Sarasota, FL, Washington DC, Lexington, Kentucky and San Francisco, California.

Occupy Washington, D.C. begins on October 6, 2011.

The movement has moved into a global position with the new Occupy Together website, which organizes occupation protests from around the world.

It is with hope and intent that the officers who are using excessive force on peaceful protestors realize that the only ones they are hurting is themselves through the destruction of the Constitution and the right for free speech. As the Occupy Wall Street movement grows, it is hopeful that officers from other cities will join in on the side of humanity and peace.

For news you won't see on the main stream media, stay tuned to in5d alternative news.

Celebrities have joined forces with the Occupy Wall Street movement, including Noam Chomsky, rap artist Immortal Technique, Michael Moore and actress Susan Sarandon.

In a related story, MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell is siding with the peaceful protesters who have been abused by the New York City Police Department, stating, "This weekend, a few troublemakers turned a peaceful protest against Wall Street greed into a violent burst of chaos. The troublemakers carried pepper spray and guns and were wearing badges... for not doing anything."

Down on Wall Street

2011-10-03T12:32:00.000-04:00

Down on Wall Street

Occupy Wall Street is calling for a just and equitable society.

Join us on Wednesday or sign the petition to show your support!

Over the past two weeks, we’ve seen something unusual and promising: a gathering of people -- mostly young -- who are protesting the corporate power and coarse inequality that characterizes our society and economy. For two weeks, these inspired and inspiring young people, under the banner of Occupy Wall Street, have occupied our attention and camped out in Liberty Plaza. WFP staff have brought back exciting reports from a demonstration that gets more interesting every day.

We stand with them in their call for a more just and equitable society.

It’s time to do more than just stand with these protesters. It’s time to walk with them.

This Wednesday, October 5, we will join with allies in labor and community and environmental and on-line groups, tenants and homeowners, workers and free-lancers, musicians and teachers and subway riders and students and anyone else who is sick and tired of the “greed is good” mentality that is destroying our country. We will join the protesters for a Solidarity March. Starting in front of City Hall at 4:30 pm, we’ll march down Wall Street to support the protesters and show the world that the spirit of Wisconsin and Tahrir Square is alive and well in New York City.

Can you join us for the march?

YES.

NO, but I stand with you.

We owe the Occupy Wall Street folks a debt (and we don’t mean a collateralized debt-swap). They have put their bodies on the line, in the rain and the cold, night after night to say: Enough is Enough.

As the demonstrators settle in for the long haul, they need all kinds of support. Most important is showing up. But if you can't come out for Wednesday's march or any other events, you can help in other ways. They need some basic supplies to continue their occupation: sleeping bags, food donations, and simple sanitation supplies like garbage bags.

Will you be there on Wednesday?

Yes:

http://action.workingfamiliesparty.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=4817&ows_march=Yes

No but I’ll be there in spirit:

http://action.workingfamiliesparty.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=4817&ows_march=No

Standing in solidarity,

Dan Cantor
Executive Director, WFP

P.S. - If you’re not in New York, you can find other events across the country at the Occupy Together website: http://www.occupytogether.org/

2011-10-03T12:02:00.001-04:00

Solidarity Alert

Please join AFTRANY as we support DC 37 Local 372, Parents, Teachers, Union Leaders, Community Activists, and Elected Officials in protesting and opposing the layoffs of school staff workers.

Tuesday, Oct. 4 from 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.

(We will be leaving from the AFTRA office located at 260 Madison Avenue at 3:30 p.m.)
The rally will be held at City Hall.

If you cannot meet at the AFTRA office but would like to attend you can take the 4,5,6,N, or R train to City Hall/Brooklyn Bridge or the A or C train to Chambers Street, or the 2 to Park Place and look out for the "AFTRA in Solidarity" signs.

Click here for map.

Follow AFTRA:

Click here to visit AFTRA.com.

UPDATE: NABET-CWA/ABC-Disney NEGOTIATIONS

2011-09-27T02:18:00.000-04:00

B U L L E T I N

NABET-CWA/ABC-Disney NEGOTIATIONS

Los Angeles, CA

BULLETIN #25

September 26, 2011

On Friday evening September 23rd, NABET-CWA and ABC, Inc. negotiators concluded a scheduled round of bargaining, following six days of meetings.

While both parties approached this round of bargaining with the shared goal of reaching a tentative agreement, a successor to the expired Master Agreement has not yet been agreed upon.

The Company remained focused on major elements of their previous packages while the Union offered alternatives and counter proposals in several critical and unresolved areas. The parties are still negotiating over open issues such as ENG/EFP digital camera usage, wages and pension.

At this point, the parties have not agreed to future bargaining dates but are communicating. We will keep you posted with the latest information and developments.

The Union Bargaining Committee reminds all members to ignore rumors. All official negotiation and mobilization information will be delivered on the Sector website (www.nabetcwa.org), on Local websites, hotlines, and e-mail lists.

NABET-CWA Network Negotiating Committee

NABET-CWA • 501 3rd Street NW • Washington, DC 20001 • 202-434-1100

Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum Trashes Unions at GOP Debate

2011-09-26T12:09:00.002-04:00

Republican Presidential candidate Rick Santorum

During Thursday night's Republican presidential debate on Fox News, former Pennsylvania Senator and Republican Presidential candidate Rick Santorum said:

"We've seen these battles on the state level where unions have bankrupted states from pension plans to here on the federal level. Thirty to 40%, union employees make above their private sector equivalents. I do not believe that state, federal or local workers should be involved in unions."

Broadcast Union News: Frankly, Mr. Santorum's comments show a lack of understanding of organized labor's role in the creation of America's middle class that pales only by his lack of respect for working people in general.

Santorum, a favorite of social conservatives, is a staunch opponent of abortion rights, stem-cell research, unions, and the social safety net. He believes that we are at war with "radical Islam" rather than in a fight with global terrorism. Santorum proudly boasts on his website that he is "one of the most conservative senators in Pennsylvania's history". He served in the U.S. Senate from 1995-2007, and was defeated for a third term by Democrat Bob Casey.

Below is information from an article from the CNN Truth Squad: How Much Do Unions Cost Taxpayers?

The Facts:

-- Overall, unionized workers do earn more than non-union counterparts, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. Median weekly earnings for full-time union members were $917 in 2010, compared to $717 for non-union workers, the BLS reported in January.

-- The AFL-CIO, the largest U.S. labor federation, says union members make about 30% more than non-union workers. They also are more likely to be covered by health insurance and retirement plans, according to the BLS.

-- Public employees are far more likely to be in unions. Fewer than 7% of private-sector employees were union members in 2010, compared to 36% for government employees, according to the BLS.

-- A BLS report in June found private industry spent an average of $28.13 per hour on wages and benefits, compared to $40.40 for state and local government employees. But it noted that public and private-sector costs "should not be directly compared," as they involved many differences in the types of jobs. Many private-sector employees hold sales and manufacturing jobs not often seen in government, for example, while jobs like teachers make up a greater share of public payrolls.

-- While not quite "bankrupted," as Santorum put it, states, cities and counties are struggling with issues like pension costs as their own revenues have been hard-hit by the 2007-2009 recession and its ongoing hangover, according to the non-profit, non-partisan Center for State and Local Government Excellence, a Washington-based think tank that focuses on public employee pay.

-- While union workers make more in general than non-union workers, a new report from the center found that when total wages and benefits for public employees lag slightly behind private-sector workers, by about 4%. Public pensions and health benefits are more generous, but public employees are more likely to have college degrees and make less than comparable private-sector workers, the study found.

The Verdict:

Overall, union workers earn more than non-unionized employees, and public employees earn more on average than private-sector workers. But analysts say an apples-to-apples comparison is difficult due to differing occupations, and that many educated workers in the public sector could make more in the private sector than in government jobs.

Broadcast Union News: (From www.aflcio.org) By bargaining collectively, union members are able to negotiate higher wages. Union members earn almost 28 percent more than nonunion members. The union wage benefit is greatest for people of color and women. Latino union workers earn almost 51 percent more than their nonunion counterparts. Union women earn almost 34 percent more than nonunion women. For African Americans, the union advantage is 31 percent. The union advantage for white male workers is almost 21 percent. For Asian American workers the union advantage is close to 1 percent.

In states that have laws restricting workers' rights to form strong unions, the average pay for all workers is lower. So-called "right to work" for less laws that limit workers' rights to collectively bargain contracts (including wages and benefits) are a bad deal for all workers. In 2009, average pay in so-called "right to work" states was 11.1 percent lower than in states where workers have the freedom to form strong unions.

Union workers are more likely than their nonunion counterparts to be covered by health insurance, and to receive pension benefits and paid sick leave, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. In March 2010, 84 percent of union workers were covered by health insurance through their jobs, compared with only 55 percent of nonunion workers.

According to Professor Harley Shaiken of the University of California-Berkeley,[1] unions are associated with higher productivity, lower employee turnover, improved workplace communication, and a better-trained workforce.

Prof. Shaiken is not alone. There is a substantial amount of academic literature on the following benefits of unions and unionization to employers and the economy:

Economic Growth
Productivity
Competitiveness
Product or service delivery and quality
Training
Turnover
Solvency of the firm
Workplace health and safety
Economic development

Economic Growth

During the period 1945-1973, when a high percentage of workers had unions, wages kept pace with rising productivity, prosperity was widely shared, and economic growth was strong. Since 1973, union density and collective bargaining have declined, causing real wages to stagnate despite rising productivity. This decline in union density and bargaining contributed to the current financial crisis and severe recession, as unsustainable asset appreciation and easy credit too the place of wage increases most workers were not getting [2]

Productivity

According to a recent survey of 73 independent studies on unions and productivity: “The available evidence points to a positive and statistically significant association between unions and productivity in the U.S. manufacturing and education sectors, of around 10 and 7 percent, respectively.”[3]

Some scholars have found an even larger positive relationship between unions and productivity. According to Brown and Medoff, “unionized establishments are about 22 percent more productive than those that are not.”[4]

Product/ Service Delivery and Quality

According to Professors Michael Ash and Jean Ann Seago [5] heart attack recovery rates are higher in hospitals where nurses are unionized than in non-union hospitals. According to Professor Paul Clark, nurse unions improve patient care by raising staff-to-patient ratios, limiting excessive overtime, and improving nurse training. [6]

Another study looked at the relationship between unionization and product quality in the auto industry.[7] According to a summary of this study prepared by American Rights at Work:

“The author examines the system of co-management created through the General Motors-United Auto Workers partnership at the Saturn Corporation…The author credits the union with building a dense communications network throughout Saturn's management system. Compared to non-represented advisors, union advisors showed greater levels of lateral communication and coordination, which had a significant positive impact on quality performance.”

Training

Several studies in have found a positive association between unionization and the amount and quality of workforce training. Unionized establishments are more likely to offer formal training.[8] This is especially true for small firms. There are a number of reasons for this: less turnover among union workers, making the employer more likely to offer training; collective bargaining agreements that require employers to provide training; and finally, unions often conduct their own training.

Turnover

Professor Shaiken also finds that unions reduce turnover. He cites Freeman and Medoff’s finding that “about one fifth of the union productivity effect stemmed from lower worker turnover. Unions improve communication channels giving workers the ability to improve their conditions short of ‘exiting.’”[9]

Solvency

Labor’s enemies assert that unions drive employers out of business, but academic research refutes this claim. According to Professors Richard Freeman and Morris Kleiner, unionism has a statistically insignificant effect (meaning no effect) on firm solvency.[10] Freeman and Kleiner conclude “unions do not, on average, drive firms or business lines out of business or produce high displacement rates for unionized workers.”

Workplace Health and Safety

Employers should be concerned about workplace health and safety as a matter of enlightened self-interest. According to an American Rights at Work summary of a study by John E. Baugher and J. Timmons Roberts:

“Only one factor effectively moves workers who are in subordinate positions to actively cope with hazards: membership in an independent labor union. These findings suggest that union growth could indirectly reduce job stress by giving workers the voice to cope effectively with job hazards.” [11]

The benefits of unions in terms of safer workplaces are hardly new. According to one most recent study, unions reduced fatalities in coal mining by an estimated 40 percent between 1897 and 1929. [12]

Economic Development

Unions also play a positive role in economic development. One good example is the Wisconsin Regional Training Partnership, “an association of 125 employers and unions dedicated to family-supporting jobs in a competitive business environment. WRTP members have stabilized manufacturing employment in the Milwaukee metro area, and contributed about 6,000 additional industrial jobs to it over the past five years. Among member firms, productivity is way up--exceeding productivity growth in nonmember firms.”[13]

[1] Harley Shaiken, The High Road to a Competitive Economy: A Labor Law Strategy, Center for American Progress, June 25, 2004, pp. 7-8. http://www.americanprogress.org/atf/cf/%7BE9245FE4-9A2B-43C7-A521-5D6FF2E06E03%7D/unionpaper.pdf

[2] Dean Baker, "The Recession and the Freedom to Organize," AFL-CIO Point of View, Feb. 2008

[3] Christos Doucouliagos and Patrice Laroche, “The Impact of U.S. Unions on Producivity: A Bootstrap Meta-analysis,” Proceedings of the Industrial Relations Research Association, 2004. See also, by the same authors, “What Do Unions Do to Productivity: A Meta-analysis,” Industrial Relations, Volume 42 Issue 4 October 2003:

[4] Charles Brown and James L. Medoff, “Trade Unions in the Production Process.” Journal of Political

Economy, vol. 86, no. 3 (June 1978): 355–378.

[5] Michael Ash and Jean Ann Seago, “The effect of registered nurses' unions on heart-attack mortality,” Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Vol. 57, No. 3 (Apr. 2004), pp. 422-442.

Paul Clark and Darlene Clark, "Collective Bargaining in American Hospitals: The Response of Nurse Unions to the Crisis in American Health Care, " LERA, Jan 2009.

[7] Saul A. Rubinstein, “The Impact of Co-Management on Quality Performance: The Case of the Saturn Corporation.” Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Vol. 53, No. 197 (January 2000).

[8] Harley J. Frazis, Diane E. Herz and Michael W. Horrigan, “Employer-Provided Training: Results from a New Survey.” Monthly Labor Review (May 1995): 3–17.

[9] Harley Shaiken, cited earlier, quoting Richard Freeman and James Medoff, What Do Unions Do? New York, Basic Books, 1984.

[10] Richard B. Freeman and Morris M. Kleiner, “Do Unions Make Enterprises Insolvent?” Industrial and Labor Relations Review, vol. 52, no. 4 (July 1999): 510–527.

[11] John E. Baugher and J. Timmons Roberts, “Workplace Hazards, Unions and Coping Styles.” Labor

Studies Journal, Vol. 29, No. 2 (Summer 2004).

[12] William M. Boal, "The Effect of Unionism on Accidents in US Coal Mining," 1897-1929, 'Industrial Relations,' Vol. 48, No. 1 (Jan. 2009)

[13] Annette Bernhardt, Laura Dresser, and Joel Rogers, “Taking the High Road in Milwaukee: The Wisconsin Regional Training Partnership.” Working USA, Vol. 5, Issue 3 (January 31, 2002).

WPCLB, AFL-CIO Endorses Daraio and Quezada

2011-09-20T13:53:00.000-04:00

The Westchester - Putnam Central Labor Body, AFL-CIO endorses Robert Daraio and Manuel Quezada for Village of Ossining Trustees!

Daraio and Quezada are running on the Democratic, Independence, and Working Family Party lines.

For more information visit

http://www.robertdaraio.org/p/vote-daraio-and-quesada-for-village-of.html

Former WPIX Anchor Jackie Hyland Joins CBS Affiliate WRAL in Raleigh-Durham

2011-09-20T13:27:00.000-04:00

By Merrill Knox
TV Spy

Jackie Hyland

Jackie Hyland who left New York City’s WPIX in March 2011, will debut September 27 as evening anchor on WRAL, the CBS-affiliate in Raleigh-Durham.

Hyland’s addition to the news team was announced by the station along with a handful of changes to the talent lineup. Hyland will be paired with longtime WRAL anchor Gerald Owens on the 5:30 p.m. and 10 p.m. newscasts; she will replace anchor Debra Morgan, who will take over the 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. newscasts from Pam Saulsby.

Saulsby, who has been with the station since 1991, is leaving to pursue “other opportunities outside of the station,” according to the WRAL release. She will continue to co-anchor the noon newscast until later this fall, but her final evening newscasts will be later this week.

Also on the move at the station is 5:30 p.m. anchor Cullen Browder, who will shift to full-time reporter once Owens and Hyland take over in that timeslot. “Cullen is an award winning investigative journalist,” WRAL news director Rick Gall said. “We feel our viewers are best served by having him on the street full time exposing waste and wrongdoing.”

WRAL will also debut a renovated newsroom and new weather reporting technology, including a 3D storm tracking system, on the same day.

Another Big Win For WGAE!

2011-08-08T15:24:00.001-04:00

Creative Professionals Working on Shows for Animal Planet, Food Network, National Geographic and Travel Channel Vote to Join Writers Guild East

First Contract Negotiations to Begin at Two Nonfiction TV Production Companies

Employees who write and produce nonfiction television shows including Monsters Inside Me, Samantha Brown’s Great Weekends and Worst Cooks in America for the production company Optomen Television have voted to be represented by the Writers Guild of America, East. Staff at three other nonfiction TV production companies have already voted for Guild representation. First contract negotiations at two of the companies, Atlas Media and Lion Television are set to begin on Thursday and Monday, respectively.

“We are excited that the talented people of Optomen have voted to join the Writers Guild, East. Theirs is the latest in a series of Guild election victories in the realm of non-fiction television. We look forward to working with them and to continue reaching out to the many creative men and women of non-fiction production” said WGAE President Michael Winship.

The National Labor Relations Board election at Optomen took place in December but a final vote count had been hung up in procedural delays. The final ballot was unsealed this afternoon giving the Writers Guild a majority of votes. A formal certification of the result by the NLRB is expected shortly.

WGAE Executive Director Lowell Peterson will lead the union’s bargaining team in negotiations with Lion and Atlas.

The Writers Guild of America, East, AFL-CIO, is a labor union representing writers in motion pictures, television, cable, digital media, and broadcast news. The WGAE conducts programs, seminars, and events on issues of interest to, and on behalf of, writers. In addition, it represents writers’ interests on the legislative level. For more information on the Writers Guild of America, East, visit www.wgaeast.org.

WGAE Contact:

Elana Levin

212-767-7809/347-512-2805

Elevin@wgaeast.org

http://twitter.com/Elana_Brooklyn

ONION NEWS NETWORK WRITERS JOIN WRITERS GUILD OF AMERICA EAST

2011-08-05T10:59:00.000-04:00

NEW YORK CITY - The writers on the Onion News Network have joined the community of funnypersons represented by the Writers Guild of America, East, AFL-CIO. The WGAE and ONN management negotiated a first-ever collective bargaining agreement covering the show, which will air on the Independent Film Channel beginning in September.

“The ONN writers stood together and won real improvements,” said WGAE Executive Director Lowell Peterson. “We welcome them into the WGAE and we look forward to a productive relationship with the company.” Peterson noted that more than 70 Guild members from all of the New York-based comedy shows signed a letter supporting the ONN writers, and hundreds of Guild members sent emails to the producers.

The agreement will increase minimum weekly compensation and provide pension and health contributions, retroactive to the start of writing earlier this summer. The producers also agreed to add writers and writing weeks, furthering the parties’ mutual goal of creating the best possible program.

The ONN’s second season begins on September 30. There will be ten weekly episodes.

The Writers Guild of America, East, AFL-CIO, is a labor union representing writers in motion pictures, television, cable, digital media, and broadcast news. The WGAE conducts programs, seminars, and events on issues of interest to, and on behalf of, writers. In addition, it represents writers’ interests on the legislative level. For more information on the Writers Guild of America, East, visit www.wgaeast.org.

WGAE Contact:

Elana Levin

Director of Communications

212-767-7809
elevin@wgaeast.org

Labor’s Decline and Wage Inequality

2011-08-05T10:05:00.000-04:00

By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

The decline in organized labor’s power and membership has played a larger role in fostering increased wage inequality in the United States than is generally thought, according to a study published in the American Sociological Review this month.

The study, “Unions, Norms and the Rise in U.S. Wage Inequality,” found that the decline in union power and density since 1973 explained a third of the increase in wage inequality among men since then, and a fifth of the increased inequality among women.

The study noted that from 1973 to 2007, union membership in the private sector dropped to 8 percent from 34 percent among men and to 6 percent from 16 percent among women. During that time, wage inequality in the private sector increased by more than 40 percent, the study found.

While many academics argue that increased inequality in educational attainment has played a major role in expanding wage inequality, the new study reaches a surprising conclusion, saying, “The decline of the U.S. labor movement has added as much to men’s wage inequality as has the relative increase in pay for college graduates.” The study adds that “union decline contributes just half as much as education to the overall rise in women’s wage inequality.”

The study was written by Bruce Western, a professor of sociology at Harvard University, and Jake Rosenfeld, a sociology professor at the University of Washington.

The two professors found that the decline of organized labor held down wages in union and nonunion workplaces alike. Many nonunion employers — especially decades ago, when unions represented more than 30 percent of the private sector work force — raised wages to help avert the threat of union organizing.

Moreover, the study argues that when unions were larger and had a far greater voice in politics and society, they played a more influential role in advocacy on wages across the economy, for instance, in pushing to raise the minimum wage.

“In the early 1970s, when one in three male workers were organized, unions were often prominent voices for equity, not just for their members, but for all workers,” the two professors wrote. “Union decline marks an erosion of the moral economy and its underlying distributional norms. Wage inequality in the nonunion sector increased as a result.”

The two professors note that the decline of unions is part of a common account of rising inequality that is often contrasted with a market explanation that includes technological change, immigration and foreign trade. They argue that the market explanation usually understates the role of organized labor’s decline on increased inequality.

The study notes that in the 1970s, some skilled-trades unions and construction unions helped to increased inequality through exclusionary practices that reinforced racial and ethnic inequalities. But the study said that, over all, unions in the United States had been an important force for reducing inequality — although not as much as unions in Europe, which have more influence in politics and society.

The authors found that the biggest factor in the decline in unions’ power and density was job growth outside traditional labor strongholds like manufacturing, construction and transportation. They added that another important reason for the decline of organized labor was that “employers in unionized industries intensified their opposition” to unionization efforts.

They noted that as unions have grown weaker, there has been less pressure on lawmakers to enact labor-friendly or worker-friendly measures. “As organized labor’s political power dissipates,” the authors wrote, “economic interests in the labor market are dispersed and policy makers have fewer incentives to strengthen unions or otherwise equalize economic rewards.”

After FAA Shutdown Ends, Lobbying Battle Continues

2011-08-05T09:40:00.003-04:00

by Peter Overby, NPR

Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid

Even as Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid announced a bipartisan compromise to end the shutdown at the Federal Aviation Administration Thursday afternoon, a legislative struggle — and some high-powered lobbying — continued behind the scenes.

Airlines have been struggling this summer because of higher oil prices. Now they're getting a windfall profit thanks to Congress. Although they don't have to pay aviation taxes during the partial FAA shutdown, they have not lowered fares accordingly; they're keeping the difference.

The FAA's funding is usually authorized for a period of years because many of the projects it works on — from runway extensions to revamping the air traffic control system — are multiyear projects with a lot of lead time. The last multiyear reauthorization ended in 2007. Since then, the agency has been given temporary authorizations, and the 20th such temporary measure ran out in June.

The immediate flash point in the fight over the FAA has been the Essential Air Service program, which subsidizes flights to some rural airports. House Republicans voted to end the subsidies for 13 communities. Three of them are in states represented by top Democratic senators, including Reid.

But Democrats have said the real battle is over union rights at Delta Air Lines. Sen. Jay Rockefeller's state of West Virginia has one of the targeted airports.

The big issue on a long-term reauthorization is about unions. In 2010, the National Mediation Board overturned a previous ruling relating to how airline employees can vote to join a union. In the past, airline employees who didn't take part in an election on whether or not to join a union were counted as "no" votes. This made it hard for unions to form.

The policy changed in 2010 when the board decided to count only those who actually cast ballots, meaning non-votes were no longer "no" votes. Republicans are balking at this new interpretation, and are trying to attach language to the FAA bill to revert to the old policy. Democrats won't go along. The language relating to unions is not part of the temporary extension the House approved and sent to the Senate in June.

"Most of the big airlines are unionized. Not a problem. One isn't: Delta," says Rockefeller, chairman of the transportation committee.

Unions are trying to organize Delta workers. Last year, the National Mediation Board, which oversees labor practices at the airlines, voted to make organizing easier.

The Air Transport Association — the airlines' lobbying arm — and Delta sued, and lost. Now they're appealing the decision.

This year, House Republicans voted to override the mediation board legislatively. At issue is whether a vote to unionize requires a majority of all union members, or just a majority of those who cast ballots.

Broadcast Union News Note: "Leave it to NPR to screw up the central issue. At issue is whether a vote to unionize requires a majority of all workers in the bargaining unit. If it were "a majority of all union members" the union would win easily." - Alan Hart, Managing Editor, UE News, United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE)

Delta wants the higher threshold. The judge in the case said the mediation board has the power and substantial legal precedent to use the lower one.

Republicans contend the union issue hasn't been the obstacle to funding the FAA.

"You ought to give both the employees, as well as the employer, equal opportunity to make the case," House Majority Leader Eric Cantor told Fox News on Wednesday. "But again, that's separate from this issue; [it] has to do with subsidies that the federal government is paying."

Delta agrees. In response to an interview request, company officials released a written statement saying the Essential Air Service is "the fundamental issue."

Former Sen., turned Lobbyist, Trent Lott

But Delta's lobbying records suggest another possibility. Last winter, the company hired new lobbyists: the Breaux Lott Leadership Group, one of Washington's most powerful lobby firms. John Breaux was a longtime Democratic senator from Louisiana, and Trent Lott is a veteran of the Senate GOP leadership.

In addition to representing Delta, the Breaux Lott group also signed a contract with the Air Transport Association. Their firm didn't respond to an interview request.

Lobby disclosure documents show the hirings coincided with House action to consider and adopt the anti-union provision.

Delta's lobby team already included a former chief of staff to Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell and another firm headed by Democratic strategist Steve Elmendorf. Elmendorf says he won't discuss whether he's lobbying on the anti-union provision.

"Sometimes you'll talk to Democratic lobbyists who have a corporation. They will tell you they're working on other issues" and not working against the Democrats' closest allies, says AFL-CIO Legislative Director Bill Samuel.

Delta and the Air Transport Association have spent more than $2.8 million so far this year to lobby Congress."

Delta's always spent a lot of money on Capitol Hill, and obviously there's been some payoff to that, with the way, at least, the Republicans in the House have taken up their cause," Samuel says.

That cause will persist, and so will resistance to it in the Senate, even after today's temporary agreement. And that could stymie the FAA's long-term funding indefinitely.

Broadcast Union News: The FAA’s operating authority expired on July 23, as well as the authority of airlines to collect about $30 million a day in ticket taxes, meaning the government will be unable to collect an estimated $360 million in taxes for the 13 day shutdown that instead created a windfall profit for airlines. 4,000 Federal employees and 14,000 workers in the construction trades lost 2 weeks income. So much for the GOP caring about jobs and the deficit.

Murdoch's Axing of Unions Led to Scandal in the Media

2011-08-04T14:51:00.000-04:00

By Eamonn McCann

Michael Delaney (19), died after being run over by a lorry in east London on a Saturday night in January 1987. An inquest jury found that he had been a victim of unlawful killing. But nobody has ever been prosecuted. Michael had been among trade unionists picketing the News International (NI) Ltd., the United Kingdom newspaper publishing division of News Corporation, plant at Wapping against the sacking of more than 5,000 workers and the derecognition of unions. The dispute lasted almost a year.

The Metropolitan Police worked in coordination with News International executives throughout. Police attacks on the picket-lines were a regular occurrence. Saturday nights

- when it was vital for the company to ensure that its prize asset, the News of the World, reached the shops - saw particularly brutal confrontations. In at least one instance, mounted police cavalry-charged directly into the pickets to clear a path for lorry-loads of copies of the NotW.

Anyone wondering how the Murdochs and the Met developed a relationship so close it eventually became scandalous- that's how. Anyone wondering how the "newsroom culture" which facilitated phone-hacking developed - here's how.

Murdoch's still unproven, allegation at the time was that the print unions had been destroying the newspaper industry through overstaffing, signing in "ghost workers", falsely claiming for overtime and general skiving. Thus the need for a midnight flit from the company's King's Cross office to purpose-built premises at Wapping. The dodgy activities of some print workers were of little importance to Murdoch. What irked him was union organisation, specifically, the print unions' ability to defend members. Getting rid of a bolshie father or mother of chapel (shop steward) was no easy matter. But the myth of Murdoch saving the industry from union malpractice has persisted.

Rupert Murdoch

The day the move to Wapping was announced, journalists met in the King's Cross newsroom. 'Refusniks' argued that journalists' rights and standards would be shredded if they collaborated with management in destroying the printers' organisation. Others maintained the printers brought their problems on themselves. The key speech came from Sunday Times editor Andrew Neill who made an impassioned plea for journalists to save the papers. The Wapping move was a done deal: if the journalists didn't go along, the papers would collapse.

Mr Neill has been among those commenting on the current debacle who have been anxious to make the point that, say what you like about Murdoch, he did save the newspaper industry back in the 1980s. I suppose he can hardly say anything else.

Journalists discovered as they walked into Wapping that, individually, they too were now on their own. One story from the last fortnight has been of sports reporter Matt Driscoll, sacked in 1987 while on sick leave for depression arising from humiliation heaped on him by the then editor Andy Coulson.

An employment tribunal heard how representatives of NI visited him at home while he was ill in a way which deepened his anxiety.

That would not have happened if the newsroom had been unionised. Reporter Charles Begley has recalled being ordered to dress up as Harry Potter for a conference at the News of the World (NotW) in 2001 - the paper wanted to capitalise on the boy wizard's commercial potential. Begley's humiliation was excruciating. That wouldn't have happened either in a unionised newsroom.

Former NotW showbiz reporter and whistleblower Sean Hoare, who died last week, described for Panorama the pattern of bullying and the relentless demand for exclusives no matter how they'd been obtained. He had had nobody on the paper to turn to - which wouldn't have been the case in a unionised workplace.

The absence of any organised expression of the distinct interests and concerns of journalists meant management priorities could be imposed at will. Journalists were hired on short-term contracts, typically of a year or six months. There was no need for any sacking procedure.

Anyone who didn't prove as malleable as the Murdochs, Brooks and Coulsons demanded would be cast adrift when their contract expired. The result was, as phone-hacker Glenn Mulcaire has put it, "fear all the time"

That wouldn't have happened if the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) had been on hand.

The assault on the right to union representation has been central to the development of the ethos which generated the scandal. The reason this aspect hasn't been front and centre in coverage is that to acknowledge the necessity of trade unionism would be to take discussion of the issues which arise down a path where, even today, few want to go.

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/columnists/eamon-mccann/murdochs-axing-of-unions-led-to-scandal-in-the-media-16028037.html#ixzz1U1QlsI00

Congress and the White House Reach Debt Ceiling Deal with No Cuts to Social Security and Medicare

2011-08-01T14:28:00.003-04:00

Congressional leaders have come to a compromise with the White House signing off the deal with all sides not getting what they want but at least no longer threatening the United States Government with defaulting on its obligations until 2013.

The deal reached includes raising the U.S. debt limit by at least $2.1 trillion and slashes government spending by $2.4 trillion or more, without cutting Social Security and Medicare nor raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations.

It is not the best deal for Democrats but it is not the best deal for Republicans either. When you compromise, that is usually the case.

Summary Of The Deal:

1) The U.S. economy is no longer threatened by default until 2013

2) 10-year discretionary spending caps (defense and non-defense) generating nearly $1 trillion in deficit reduction

3) $350 Billion from the Base Defense Budget – the First Defense Cut Since the 1990s.

4) Protection in the discretionary budget for the Pell Grants that will award a maximum of $5,550 per student, helping over 9 million students pay for college tuition.

5) Increases the debt limit by $2.1 trillion to meet financial obligations

6) No debt ceiling increase drama until a year after the 2012 election.

7) Creates a bipartisan committee to identifying an additional $1.5 trillion (which is part of the $2.4 trillion package) in deficit reduction, including from entitlement and tax reform, on which Congress is to vote by December 23, 2011.

8) If the bipartisan committee fails, an enforcement mechanism will trigger spending reductions of $1.2 Trillion in Deficit Reduction beginning in 2013 that will include a 50/50 cut between domestic and defense spending.

9) Enforcement mechanisms protect Social Security, Medicare beneficiaries, and low-income programs from any cuts and these programs are off limits to any sequester.

10) About the sequester if the the bipartisan committee fails:

Sequester Would Provide a Strong Incentive for Both Sides to Come to the Table:

If the fiscal committee took no action, the deal would automatically add nearly $500 billion in defense cuts on top of cuts already made, and, at the same time, it would cut critical programs like infrastructure or education. That outcome would be unacceptable to many Republicans and Democrats alike – creating pressure for a bipartisan agreement without requiring the threat of a default with unthinkable consequences for our economy.

Here is the bottom line. The President has negotiated a deal with all parties involved in this conflict and his willingness to compromise in the wee hours has paid off to ensure that the United States Governments' treasury won't be forced to default on its legal obligations which would have caused catastrophic damage to the economy. Moreover, it has resulted in

1) No discontinuance of Medicaid payments payments to States,

2) No discontinuance of U.S. Military salaries and retirement benefits,

3) No discontinuance of Social Security payments and Medicare benefits,

4) No discontinuance of Veterans' benefits,

5) No discontinuance of Federal Civil Service Salaries and Retirement benefits,

6) No discontinuance of payments to Unemployment benefits to States,

7) No discontinuance of interest and principle payments on Treasury Bonds and other securities or Student Loan payments,

8) No increased interest rates on Government, Corporate and Consumer borrowing,

9) No potential decline in equity prices, home values and retirement accounts, and

10) No increase in loss of jobs,

11) No increase in the reluctance of businesses to continue to make new investments and spend to spur the economy.

Okay, this bill does not require the wealthy to pay their fair share, nor does it close any of the tax law loopholes that allow 75% of American corporations to pay no taxes at all while reaping billions in subsidies. This bill will wreak havoc on educational programs, cost over a million jobs at a time where more Americans are out of work than at any time since the Great Depression, and cuts benefits to those unemployed, but at least it leaves the Federal government solvent and we are now able to gear up to continue the fight.

It is hard as it is to try to get anything through Congress with Republicans in power. However, what Democrats have accomplished with the cards they have been dealt, while some critics think President Obama has deceived us all year long, is that the United States Government is not in default status. The "full faith and credit of the United States of America" still means something good, solid, and true.

President Obama commented that "We have removed the cloud of uncertainty over our economy at this critical time by ensuring that no one will be able to use the threat of the nation’s first default now, or in only a few months, for political gain."

For a little dose of truth to those who think compromise is a dirty word, read the fact sheet below at your leisure instead of throwing a tantrum, whining, and complaining about how President Obama and his Administration threw us all under the bus.

Better yet, try to spend a fraction of your time pouncing on the Republicans you are technically aiding by throwing President Obama under the bus. That would be what I would call a progressive movement showing what they really stand for.

If you want to contribute to electing more and better Democrats, start by registering new voters for the next round of elections coming up soon. Become a Democratic District Leader to help pick better, stronger candidates. Participate in a "Get Out The Vote" campaign to make sure Democrats get off their butts and go the polls on election day.

Having the majority in both the House and Senate is the only way we can change the direction of our politics. Until then, rest assured that although the agenda will be framed by the current GOP majority and you will just be the same old you for the next 18 months, the opportunity for change comes up every November.

We have a lot of work to do, let's get to it.

Article from "The People's View" with italicized comments by Broadcast Union News.

WPIX to Air 5 p.m. Newscast Starting in September

2011-08-01T13:30:00.000-04:00

By Jerry Barmash

FISHBOWLNY

WPIX/Channel 11 is expanding its weekday news coverage. Beginning in early September, FishbowlNY has learned, the station is adding a 5 p.m. newscast each afternoon.

A WPIX spokeswoman says an anchor for the newscast hasn’t been chosen. But a likely candidate is Jodi Applegate, the face of Channel 11. She joined WPIX last October to solo anchor the reconstituted 10 p.m. news.

A source close to the situation tells FishbowlNY the new, one-hour broadcast will target women.

WPIX joins a crowded, competitive field in the 5 o’clock hour. Along with time slot regulars WCBS/Channel 2, WNYW/Channel 5, and WABC/Channel 7, WNBC/Channel 4 is returning to news at 5 p.m. in September, and shifting New York Live to 3 p.m.

This isn’t Channel 11′s first attempt at early evening news. News director Bill Carey had an eight-month run at 6:30 p.m. On weekends, WPIX maintains an hourly 6 p.m. newscast with Jim Watkins that started in September 2010.

WPIX currently shows reruns of Friends at 5 p.m. each day.

NABET-CWA NBCU Negotiation Update

2011-07-29T17:01:00.000-04:00

Bulletin #24

NABET-CWA/NBCU Negotiations

New York City

July 29, 2011

NABET-CWA and NBC Universal negotiators last met in New York City on Friday, June 3, 2011. While the lines of communication have, as always, remained open between the parties, bargaining activity from the Company has been stagnant for most of the past seven weeks.

On Monday, July 25, 2011, representatives from NBCU Labor Relations forwarded a 43-page package of proposed contractual changes to the Union, and asked that your Bargaining Committee formally present the package to the membership for ratification consideration.

The Company’s offer contained a condition that “…the NABET-CWA bargaining committee agrees to unanimously recommend this Memorandum of Agreement for ratification by the NABET-CWA membership.”

Sector President James C. Joyce told Executive Vice President of Labor Relations, Andrew Herzig, that while the Union’s Bargaining Committee would carefully review the package, and give full consideration to presenting the package to the membership for ratification, it is unlikely that the Committee would agree to recommend any package that did not meet the standards of the Union.

During the past few days, Union negotiators spent considerable time evaluating and discussing the Company’s offer.

In light of these intolerably lengthy and unnecessarily protracted negotiations, we are disappointed to report to you that the Company’s current offer falls far short of a contract that merits your acceptance.

You deserve much better.

The NABET-CWA Network Negotiating Committee, through Chief Spokesperson James Joyce, has informed Mr. Herzig that we would agree to present the package to the membership, but the Union’s unanimous recommendation to the membership will be to reject the offer.

Mr. Herzig replied to President Joyce that the Company will need additional time to consider the Union’s decision and to respond.

We will inform you as to the Company’s reply once we receive a response from Mr. Herzig.

Locals 11, 31, 41 and 53 are planning to conduct informational meetings for their respective memberships. Details regarding those meetings will be announced shortly. As always, please ignore all rumors.

NABET-CWA Network Negotiating Committee

NABET-CWA

501 3rd Street NW

Washington, DC 20001

202-434-1100

'American Idol' Producer Fremantle Reaches 3-Year Deal With IATSE

2011-07-26T16:37:00.000-04:00

By Joshua L. Weinstein

http://www.thewrap.com/

The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees has reached a three-year agreement with Fremantle Media.

The agreement covers domestic programs produced for network and basic cable.

Fremantle's programs include "American Idol," "America's Got Talent" and the upcoming "The X Factor."

As for IATSE, it represents makeup artists, wardrobe, camera operators, electricians, props, carpenters, and other production-crew workers.

"This new enhanced agreement underlines our commitment to working with Fremantle Media North America on some of the biggest programming brands in television," the union's president said in a written statement.

In the statement, Fremantle's executive VP of production, Dan Goldberg, said, "When it comes to production, we pride ourselves on a consistent high level of quality and creativity. Members of the IA are the best at their crafts, so it only makes sense to work with them all the time."

Last November, the union called a strike on NBC's "The Biggest Loser," which is produced by Reveille Productions, 25/7 Productions and 3 Ball Productions. The strike lasted two weeks.

Federal Appeals Court Rejects Relaxed Cross-Ownership Rule

2011-07-07T17:35:00.003-04:00

By Harry A. Jessell

TVNewsCheck

In remanding the relaxed 2008 version of the 35-year-old broadcast-newspaper cross-ownership rule to the FCC for another look, the U.S. Appeals Court said the agency's decision to allow common ownership in large markets had "failed to meet the notice and comment requirements" in reviewing the rule as required by law. The court also affirmed the TV duopoly rule and other local owneship limits.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Philadelphia today threw out the FCC's 2008 rule permitting common ownership of broadcast stations and newspapers in large markets, while upholding rules limiting TV station duopolies and other local ownership restrictions. The federal appeals court also ordered a further review of efforts to promote minority and female ownership of media outlets.

The court also said that the FCC failed to demonstrate how its Diversity Order structured primarily to benefit small business entities (and cited in the crossownership rulemaking) would enhance minority and female ownership of media outlets. That has also been remanded to the Commission for further examination. Since the FCC had long ago determined that a return to its previous preferences based on race and/or gender would not pass constitutional muster, the court ruling may not leave the Commission much room to maneuver.

The rules had been challenged by groups opposed to media consolidation who are trying to preserve or strengthen them as well as by broadcasters and newspaper publishers who argued for getting rid of them or loosening them further. In remanding the relaxed 2008 version of the 35-year-old broadcast-newspaper crossownership rule to the FCC for another look, the panel said the agency had "failed to meet the notice and comment requirements" in reviewing the rule as required by law.

In essence, the rule would have allowed newspaper-broadcast combinations in the top 20 markets and in smaller markets under certain limited circumstances. Media owners felt the rule was a modest concession to the previous ban.

In affirming the FCC TV duopoly rule, which limits the markets where a broadcasters may own two stations, the panel said it was not persuaded by the broadcasters' argument that the rule was "overly restrictive."

According to the panel, the FCC, in choosing to retain the rule in 2008, did not ignore the explosion of other media outlets; it simply concluded that the rule remained necessary to promote competition among stations within markets.

The court also affirmed that the ownership rules are constitutional, rejecting arguments that they violated the First and Fifth Amendment rights of broadcasters and publishers.

The panel said the FCC rules do not violate the First Amendment because they "are rationally related to substantial government interests in promoting competition and protecting viewpoint diversity."

And the panel ruled that there is "no basis" for the claim that the rules are aimed at manipulating content. "These rules apply regardless of the content of the programming," it said.

Cox Media Group and Media General argued that the broadcast-newspaper crossownership rule violated newspapers' right to equal protection under the First Amendment by treating newspapers differently from other media.

The panel said the argument lacked merit. "The Supreme Court has upheld this treatment ... and we are bound by that precedent," it said.

The panel also declined to toss out the Supreme Court's long-established scarcity doctrine that says the government may regulate broadcasting because broadcast channels are scarce.

The abundance of non-broadcast media does not render broadcast spectrum less scarce, the court said. "The Supreme Court's justification for the ... doctrine remains as true today as it was in 2004 — indeed, in 1975 ...."

Over the objections of consolidation foes, the court decided not to undo the FCC's grant of permanent waivers of the crossownership rule that allow two companies operate TV stations and newspapers in five markets — Gannett in Phoenix and Media General in Myrtle Beach-Florence, S.C.; Columbus, Ga.; Panama City, Fla., and Tri-Cities, Tenn.-Va.

"Although we have several concerns about these permanent waivers, we conclude that we do not have jurisdiction to reach the merits of ... petitioners' claims," the court said.

Reaction to the ruling from the National Association of Broadcasters was muted. "There have been sweeping changes in the media landscape since most of the broadcast ownership rules were adopted decades ago," said EVP Dennis Wharton in a statement. "NAB believes that modest reform of rules to allow free and local broadcasters to compete successfully in a universe of national pay TV and radio platforms is warranted."

Meanwhile, Free Press, the group that has been leading the charge against structural deregulation, applauded the ruling.

“Today’s decision is a sweeping victory for the public interest,” said Corie Wright, policy counsel of Free Press. “In rejecting the arguments of the industry and exposing the FCC's failures, the court wisely concluded that competition in the media — not more concentration — will provide Americans with the local news and information they need and want.”

The court also affirmed that the rules are "not only constitutional but necessary to preserve competition, as well as to promote diverse sources of news and information for the American people,” said Wright, who argued the case along with Andrew Jay Schwartzman of Media Access Project, on behalf of Prometheus Radio Project, Media Alliance, the Office of Communication of the United Church of Christ and Free Press.

Media owners seeking relief from the rules were awaiting the decision so that the FCC could get on with another review of the ownership rules, which it is mandated by law to do every four years. While the case based on the 2008 action has been pending at the Third Circuit the FCC has been pretty much unable to complete work on its 2010 Quadrennial Review of its ownership rules. The court said the issues it remanded should now be incorporated into the 2010 Quadrennial Review. The FCC is currently undertaking another review of its media ownership rules. In a statement, the agency said that they ‘’should be able to take appropriate steps to ensure that the nation’s media marketplace remains healthy and vibrant.”

Broadcast Union News: The rules struck down by the court had lifted the ban on cross ownership in the 20 largest media markets, reducing diversity and limiting access for new media outlets. ”This decision is a vindication of the public’s right to have a diverse media environment. We won on almost every point,” said Andrew Jay Schwartzman, senior vice president and policy director of the Media Access Project, which represented Prometheus Radio Project in challenging the changes. "The FCC majority knew that its effort to allow more media concentration was politically and legally unworkable, so it tried to end-run the procedural protections that are designed to give the public the right to participate in agency proceedings. ”

NLRB ALLEGES WRONGFUL TERMINATION OF UNION SUPPORTER AT ITV IN WRITERS GUILD, EAST CAMPAIGN

2011-07-07T11:00:00.000-04:00

NEW YORK CITY – After a three-month investigation, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has just issued a formal complaint against ITV/Kirstall for firing a long-time producer for his support of the Writers Guild of America, East’s (WGAE) efforts to organize ITV employees. The NLRB hearing is expected to begin in late July.

A majority of writers and producers at ITV Studios, which produces shows including Steven Seagal: Lawman, The First 48 and Four Weddings, voted for WGAE representation in a secret ballot conducted in December 2010. Since that time, the company has tied up certification of the majority vote with various legal maneuvers. About 80 people will become WGAE members when the vote is certified and will bargain for health and pension benefits, improved compensation, and reasonable working hours.

“We are pleased the NLRB is pursuing this case. No one should be fired for supporting a union and seeking a voice on the job,” said Lowell Peterson, WGAE Executive Director. “While the NLRB’s decision is good news, ITV continues to ignore its employees’ vote for Guild representation. We urge ITV to reinstate the employee and to come to the bargaining table so we can negotiate a fair and equitable contract for all the employees who do the work that makes the company successful.”

ITV is one of three NLRB elections the WGAE has won its industry-wide campaign to organize the largely non-unionized non-fiction sector of the TV industry. Other wins include Atlas Media (Biography, Dr. G: Medical Examiner, American Eats) and Lion Television (Cash Cab for Discovery Network, Megadrive for MTV, and History Detectives and America Revealed for PBS).

For more information on the Writers Guild of America, East, visit www.wgaeast.org.

For all editorial and press inquiries, please contact:

Elana Levin

Director of Communications
212-767-7809
elevin@.wgaeast.org

WGA Stats Reveal Paltry New Media Payday

2011-07-07T10:32:00.000-04:00

By Richard Horgan
FishbowlLA
July 6, 2011

In recent years, newspaper and TV coverage of contract renewal negotiations between the Writers Guild of America and Hollywood has placed great emphasis on the new media landscape, and how online streams of member content should be compensated.

Thanks to the latest stats from WGA West, it is possible to quantify just how well (or not so well) west coast scribes are doing these days on the Internet. According to the figures, 2010 new media residuals for west coast union members amounted to a total of $2.63 million.

At first glance, not too bad. But when you divide this amount by the WGA West’s membership total of 12,000, it amounts to an average per member of just $219.16.

That’s barely enough to cover the cost of an awards season tuxedo rental and dry clean. It’s better than nothing, obviously, and actually as a whole a 24% increase over the previous year. But the average sum shows that the union’s new media equation still has a long way to go before it can be truly deemed a Hollywood success story.

FishbowlLA

Tribune Company ‘Deal From Hell’: A Tale of Greed and Hypocrisy

2011-07-04T17:28:00.000-04:00

By Sharon Waxman

It’s hard to say who comes out worse in James O’Shea’s new book, “The Deal from Hell: How Moguls and Wall Street Plundered Great American Newspapers” -- the Tribune Company itself Sam Zell, Mark Willes, the Chandler family, JP Morgan or any one of the myriad senior executives who cut the bottom line while pocketing huge bonuses.

The journalists don’t come out looking so great either.

I already knew the story and even so, reading this tale of bad-to-worse makes me seriously depressed.

Why did anyone think that a trash-talking billionaire, Zell, who proudly stated he knew and cared nothing about newspapers, would be able to save The Los Angeles Times and other Tribune papers?

Here’s how it turned out: bankruptcy, and an atmosphere so hostile to journalism that talent fled while everybody else cowered in fear.

Sam Zell

O’Shea does a service in laying out precisely how much precious cash was wasted on bonuses to senior managers to close deals that had no long-term strategy for success, investment bankers with no stake in the future of the company and lawyers sorting through the bankruptcy.

For those who value newspapers and what they contribute to society, the numbers are enough to turn your stomach:

* $283 million in investment banking fees to close the $7 billion “deal from hell” -- Zell’s creative takeover of the Tribune Company, which used an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) to avoid taxes.

* $41 million in salary, bonus and stock to Tribune CEO Dennis Fitzsimons, who presided over the decline of the company, for closing the deal.

* $10 million in bonus, salary, stock to John Reardon, president of Tribune Broadcasting.

* $13.8 million to Don Grenesko, CFO, bonus, salary and stock.

* $300 million in legal fees over the bankruptcy fight.

That would be more than enough cash to run the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune for several years. In other words, they could have made the product better, instead of coming up with endless ways to refinance and cut operating costs.

But that’s starting at the end of the story.

O’Shea spent three decades at the Chicago Tribune and then led the Tribune-owned Los Angeles Times for a year, giving him a front-row seat to the historic drama of decline at a great newspaper company.

He sums it up succinctly: “The greed, incompetence, corruption, hypocrisy and arrogance of people who put their interests ahead of the public” add up to a tale of corporate disaster.

As we headed into the 21st century, the broad strokes were well known.

At the Chicago Tribune, as at the Los Angeles Times and other papers, circulation was in decline, advertising was also ebbing, the internet was on the rise and ideas about how to counter these trends were remarkably simple: fire people, cut costs.

O’Shea does a good job of sketching the historic backdrop of the Tribune Company, and reminds us that this is not the first major dislocation in American newspapers. Thousands were laid off in the 1930s, many never to find work again, as cities with a half-dozen newspapers found markets to sustain only a few.

And again, he reminds us that newspapers had been severely downsizing non-editorial staff since the mid-1970s, as technological efficiencies reduced the need for manpower at the printing presses.

Between 1975 and 1990, he tells us, production staffs were cut by 50 percent or more. Not surprisingly, this coincided with Tribune Company going public in 1975, and pushing hard to increase profit margins.

Which it did.

Heirs of Henry Chandler, who married the daughter of L.A. Times founder Harrison Gray Otis, share in the trusts that had long controlled the ownership of Times Mirror.

After more than 120 years, the Chandlers got out of the newspaper business.

The much-celebrated and maligned Chandler family that once dominated the civic, cultural and political life of Southern California through its control of the Los Angeles Times agreed to what had previously been unthinkable, selling its entire stake in Tribune Co., the newspaper's parent, cashing in on their historic legacy.

Calculations by Forbes of the family's collective net worth, based on the stock price of $88 on the day of the sale, showed a 35% jump to $3.8 billion from the prior to the transaction estimate of $2.8 billion.

Tribune had been bought, merged with the L.A. Times and bought again, each time by partners not particularly interested in the legacy of the journalism that is the essence of America’s great newspapers.

Each new owner and dealmaker thought that he could fix it by cutting further. No one had the thought that investing in the new direction journalism was going made any sense.

Much more than “Page One,” the new documentary about The New York Times, the “Deal from Hell” gives us a serious and informed view of the destruction of an American journalistic institution (or two of them, in this case).

O’Shea shares some fascinating inside stories based on his front-row seat as editor in chief and his long-time relationships with people who gave him interviews for the book.

We learn that the famed “cereal killer” Mark Willes, the manager who came from General Mills to be CEO of Times Mirror in 1995 with a business-first approach, was not all bad. (Not counting the time he brought in consultants who declared that the shredded paper “smelled like fish,” where it needed to smell like “Starbucks and coffee cake.”)

Those of us who only knew Willes as a clueless bottom-liner responsible for the Staples scandal may be surprised to learn that he vastly improved the financial outlook at the Times in the late 1990s. He shut the money-losing New York Newsday and cut jobs, along with the newsstand price, and created new sections and additions to broaden the reader base.

Under Willes, circulation rose, operating profits soared and earnings per share increased more than 50 percent, O’Shea writes.

It wasn’t enough for the Chandlers, the family that held the controlling stake in Times Mirror. Despite being paid $2.1 billion in dividends under Willes’ tenure, the Chandlers still decided to cash out further. Without telling Willes, they sold the company to Tribune.

According to former managing editor Leo Wolinsky, Willes would wander the halls and weep after this stunning betrayal.

Dennis Fitzsimons

There’s delicious gossip in Chicago rube (and Trib CEO) Dennis Fitzsimons not knowing that he needed a passport to travel to Istanbul, and revealing his main source of knowledge about the Iraq war -- his friend Geraldo Rivera. The sexist, potty-mouthed dirt on Zell and his frat-boy buddies has been well documented previously by David Carr at The New York Times.

But the journalists don’t look too swell, either. They were arrogant and clueless about the need for change in their long-protected newsrooms. They were slow to understand that this was a battle for survival, slow to adopt the changes the internet demanded.

In his reporting, O’Shea relies too heavily for my taste on Wolinsky, a senior editor in the L.A. Times newsroom. And he has high praise for John Montorio, someone whose reputation in the newsroom and beyond was not consistent with that view.

These are among those who failed to push toward the new type of journalism that defines our era -- immediate, informed by a strong point of view and open to interaction with the reader. (Oddly, Wolinsky praises Willes for believing that “our future was squarely in print. He ignored the internet, thought it was just a fad.”)

Tribune, about to emerge from bankruptcy in a matter of months, is one of the most extreme examples of what has happened to American newspapers in the past decade. It is an extraordinary saga of greed, arrogance, self-interest and lack of vision.

At the end of bankruptcy, the Tribune Company is likely to end up being run by Jamie Dimon and his JP Morgan Chase.

It’s the end game for Tribune Company, and we are all the worse for it.

New York City Central Labor Council AFL-CIO June 2011 Report

2011-07-01T12:16:00.004-04:00

After a three month hiatus in which the New York State AFL-CIO President, Denis Hughes coordinated a 21 amendment redesign of the New York City Central Labor Council constitution, a meeting was held on June 9, 2011 at which the 21 amendments to the constitution were presented to the delegates for review.

Vincent Alvarez, newly elected President
NYCCLC-AFL-CIO

At that meeting Vincent Alvarez from IBEW Local 3 was nominated for President.

Arthur Cheliotes from CWA Local 1180 and Janella Hinds from UFT were nominated for Secretary Treasurer.

NABET-CWA Local 16 Secretary/Treasurer, Rich Gelber, made a seconding speech for Arthur Cheliotes.

At the June 30, 2011 NYCCLC meeting, attended by 318 delegates from 21 unions representing 590,827 members, approved the new constitution, which had been pre-approved by AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka.

On instruction from the national AFL-CIO, the package of constitution changes was voted on intact, with no separation of issues permitted, to the consternation of several delegates, many of whom felt that each of the 21 ammendments should have been discussed and voyed upon individually.

Vincent Alvarez from IBEW Local 3 was elected President.

Janella Hinds and Vincent Alvarez

Janella Hinds was elected Secretary Treasurer, Arthur Cheliotes having dropped out in expectation of a run for a new, as yet not created Executive Vice-President position to be proposed at the next NYCCLC meeting.

An additional constitution change, submitted by Arthur Cheliotes at the June 9 meeting, and read, but not voted on yet, was discussed at the June 30 meeting. This ammendment would create 6 Senior Vice President (SVP) positions, to be appointed by the CLC President and ratified by the Executive Board. These new SVPs would be tasked with promoting diversity.
Respectfully Submitted,

Rich Gelber and Robert R. Daraio

Delegates NYCCLC-AFL-CIO

NABET-CWA Local 16

New York City Central Labor Council Elects New President

Vincent Alvarez Will Lead Largest Labor Council in the Country

by New York State AFL-CIO

Last night, Vincent Alvarez was elected President of the New York City Central Labor Council, the largest such council in the country, representing more than one million union members throughout the city.

Brother Alvarez was unanimously elected by the umbrella organization's delegate body to serve a four year term. Earlier in the evening, delegates voted to amend the constitution, making the President a full-time officer of the Council.

A 21-year member of Local 3 International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and a native of Staten Island, Mr. Alvarez won the esteem of union leaders over two decades of volunteer work with the Council.

“He is the most honest and decent guy you’ll ever meet,” said Ed Ott, a former executive director of the Council who is now a distinguished lecturer in labor studies at the City University of New York’s Murphy Institute. “This is what the Council needs. It will reassure the members that the place is now in good hands.”

Upon his election, Vincent Alvarez, a member of IBEW Local #3, stated, "It is an incredible honor to lead this Council at such a critically important time for working families. Working men and women face immense challenges, both in the workplace and in their everyday lives. Our city, state and country are continuing to struggle through one of the most difficult economic periods in the last 80 years. And during that time, we have seen workers suffer dramatically.

"It's time the New York City labor movement raises its collective voice and says "enough is enough" to policies that adversely affect working people. We have the talent, we have the strength and we have the resolve to address these challenges. And together, we will prevail."

In his address to the delegates, Brother Alvarez also outlined his vision of the Central Labor Council under his leadership. "We are committed to working tirelessly at putting together a competent organization, comprised of intelligent and dedicated individuals poised to deal with today's challenges and who are ready, willing and able to serve this labor movement. Tonight I pledge to you that working together as one movement – public sector, private sector and building trades – we will redouble our efforts to find effective solutions to complex problems affecting working people."

Janella Hinds

Delegates also elected Janella Hinds, a member of the United Federation of Teachers, to the newly created position of Secretary Treasurer. Sister Hinds has been a labor activist for fifteen years, and is a skilled negotiator who has served on numerous negotiating committees advocating for member rights.

The four year term for each of the newly elected officers begins immediately.