Annotation to the "cheat sheet" ---Labor Issues

In a confidential memo to the Pacifica Foundation Executive Committee and to the station managers, Pacifica's new hired gun (PR style), Burt Glass (formerly with the Justice Dept.'s COPS program (Community Oriented Police Services), put out what he called a "cheat sheet" to help station and Pacifica officials answer questions from listeners and the media. This from a guy who has been with Pacifica a little over two weeks.

First item on his agenda? More of Pacifica's nonsense about their relations with the American Consulting Group, the nasty union- busting operation that Pacifica CEO Pat Scott hired last year for $30,000 bucks to help write a contract that would decimate the unions at the foundation's three unionized stations.

This is an outfit that has worked for TRW, Sony, Union Carbide, RJR Nabisco, the LA Times and for the last two years for the Lafayette Park Hotel in Lafayette, well within KPFA's signal, in an effort to keep the largely Latina workforce from organizaing there.

KPFA has already done several programs on ACG, including David Bacon's interview with Gabe Hernandez of Local 2850 of the Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union who is leading the organizing drive. Of course, David couldn't mention that Pacifica had hired the ACG on the air because if he had done so, so-called "free speech radio" would have bounced him from the air.

Yet Glass, getting his information from Pat Scott, has chosen to put the following nonsense out to all the stations as if it was the truth, something from which the foundation and station management have been estranged for so long that they can't recognize it even when it's in their interest to do so. Instead, they continue making themselves look even more ridiculous by covering it up. Here's the man from COPs, first installment, with some comments in brackets. And there's more coming. -

Jeffrey Blankfort - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Glass:

Labor issues:

Why did Pacifica management hire a union-busting firm to deal with the unionized workers at WBAI in New York?

Pacifica remains a pro-union, pro-worker organization. We have never sought to "bust a union." In fact, we welcome organized labor, and have devoted countless hours of on-air programming about the struggle of unions and working people.

[In the next installment, Glass will explain why Pacifica's attempt to have the union at WBAI decertified by the National Relations Board is not "union-busting."]

Recognizing that we lacked the in-house expertise in some aspects of labor law, Pacifica retained the services of American Consulting Group in 1995 to be available by phone to advise us. We paid them $1,000 for their assistance. To our chagrin, we then heard allegations that the firm had participated in some anti- union activities in its history.

[Ying Lee Kelly, former KPFA Advisory Board member and long-time Washington staffer for Berkeley Congressman Ron Dellums, told me that the reason that Pacifica hired the ACG was that no progressive labor lawyer would take the job. Indeed, the man who hired Scott, former Pacifica Exec. Director David Salniker is a labor lawyer as is Bill Sokol, a Sunday morning talk show host and Scott sycophant.]

To this day, we have been unable to verify these allegations.

[That statement should tell folks all they need to know about Pacifica and Mr. Glass. Doesn't it sound like some State Dept. mouthpiece denying the record of CIA-sponsored death-squads in El Salvador and Guatemala?]

Still, we canceled their contract because we value our reputation as pro-union and pro-worker.

[The contract was cancelled because of the bad publicity. If it had not been discovered by former KPFK staffer Lyn Gerry, it might still be in effect, because Scott never informed the Pacifica Board that she had hired the ACG, or so says David Assman, a reprsentative from the KPFA Advisory Board to the national board.]

We continue to negotiate in good faith with our New York employees to arrive at a fair contract for all parties.

[When have we not heard from a management toady that they are negotiating "in good faith"?] --