Charles McClung, board chair: The next person we have signed up is Vince.

Vince Ivory: Yes, uh, a couple of questions for you and Dorothy [Nassiter, 
National Board Rep] regarding the Board of Directors Meeting. You mentioned 
a large contingent from New York who came to discuss labor issues. Were
they...were the labor issues part of the agenda at all? Were they discussed,
was anything decided?

Charles: No, that's an ongoing, internal issue, labor negotiations is not 
part of the Board. The Board doesn't do that, that's done by the management 
of the station. But they came down because they wanted to make their opinion
known, and I will report, because Dorothy wasn't there during that portion 
of the meeting, that there was a-----they were very strongly supportive of 
the notion that the volunteer programmers should continue to be members of 
the union. And it's, you're probably aware, and for the general audience, 
there's an issue in the contract negotiations...that's public, isn't it? 
[to Mark Schubb] That aspect of it? I think it's pretty...

Vince: I'll say it, anyway.......

Charles: Yeah, well, but I mean it's, it's out in the open, it's not, it's 
not part of something that's...negotiations that I'm not supposed to report 
back----

[Philip Ajofoyinbo says something]

Charles: Sorry?

Phiip: Can we have a retreat right here?

Charles: Someday we'll have a retreat, Philip. When you get on the Board. 
We'll have a retreat. Basically, they wanted to express, very strongly, 
and they did, their position, and many of th
are called there, are represented by the Unions in both places. And, 
Pacifica wants to change that, as you just said.

Charles: That's correct.

Vince: Right. Uh, is the Board not involved in that in any way? Do you 
think it's appropriate for the board to be involved?

Charles: Well--

Vince:...In a larger context, there's.....

Charles: Go ahead, I'll let you finish.

Vince:...been quite a bit of publicity around union-busting activities 
which have been taking place within Pacifica, and, and, raising serious 
questions, and I wonder whether or not the Board...feels it's appropriate 
to be involved in this at all.

Charles: Well......

Vince: I don't mean this Board, I mean the Board of Directors.

Charles:...I think that's a legitimate question....Do you have anything 
you want to say first, so I...I want to respond to that, but I want to 
make sure you don't get shortchanged on the time....

Vince: Not on that topic, on a completely different topic, but, uh...I 
don't want to...y'know....

Charles: Okay, well, let's just deal with that quickly.  The position of 
the Board as I see it, right now, is that there, they've asked for an 
interpretation, and there's going to be an interpretation, of whether 
that's...legal. Whether that's the law.

And it's gonna come back. Either it is or it isn't.  If the NLRB says it's 
not the province of the unions to represent volunteers, people that are 
not being paid, then the Pacifica Board is going to have a policy decision 
to make at that time, and the Union is going to have a decision to make at 
that time. It's inappropriate for us, at this point, to really comment on 
anything beyond that. That's where it stands, and I don't think it's a 
closed issue, Vince. I mean, it's not a closed issue, I mean there's a lot 
of things at stake, here. As you know. It's a labor issue.

It's a very, very sensitive issue. But it's not a union-busting thing, it 
is, clearly, a position that's being taken, and it's being negotiated in 
good faith, and that doesn't mean, that doesn't say anything about what 
the end point is going to be.

It says nothing about the end point. It just says, that's what their 
position is today, and I think we should wait and see. And you can keep 
talking to me about it, and I'm going to keep going to the meeting, and 
representing...and there's a lot of, you have to know, that the Pacifica 
National Board is not a union-busting board. It is a very, very strongly 
pro-union, pro-labor, and....and it's going to continue to be. So, this is 
not a dead issue.

Vince: I appreciate that....

Charles: Now, what was the other point, 'cause I want to make sure 
everybody else get's a chance to talk.

Vince: I don't want to run over time, if I've taken too much time......

Charles: No, go ahead, quick.

Vince: Okay...Uh, it had to do with the strategic planning process. You 
mentioned specifically that the nature of the network was being 
reconsidered. You used that phrase. And in terms of fullfilling the 
mission, and I'm wondering whether or not the mission itself is being 
rewritten, and what does that mean, exactly, the nature of the network.

Charles: That's a good question. No, the mission is not being rewritten. 
You know, the committment to, to change, progressive change, to free 
speech, to the issue, to the notions that, the fundamental notions that 
were the basis of Pacifica...none of those are changing. What I meant was, 
everything....about how we get our signal out. Like, uh, Real Audio. I mean, that's a completely new
concept,  to be on the Internet, and to able to listen to our radio over 
Internet, to be able to be in Norway and listen to our radio, and some day 
it's going to be possible, it's not today, we listened to a Norwegian 
station, in real time, when we were in New York...You're not going to be 
able to listen to, you know, KPFK in real time in Norway yet, but someday, 
you're going to be able to. That sort of thing. And what the relationship 
of the Pacifica Foundation should be to the Pacifica affiliates. And the 
realtionship we have promulgating the K-U band, and having places to, to 
take our signal into other signal areas. I mean, just a lot of open ended 
stuff. Not about getting rid of anything, adding on, enhancing....And 
conserving and protecting what we're doin'. Cause there's a very strong...
in fact, I think it may have even ended up being a resolution of the Board 
on Sunday, and during the formal Board meeting, of preserving, protecting, 
and promoting, the five radio stations.

Vince: Will we ever get to see that resolution?

Charles: You ask me for whatever you want, Vince, and I will provide it to 
you, as long as I don't violate...you know.....

Vince: Well, that's exactly why I'm asking the question.

Charles: But I will be able to provide that sort of information to you. 
So, just contact me by e-mail and I'll send it to you.

Vince: Thank you.

*     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

Some of Sally Marr's comments:....Another thing is hiring, uh, hiring 
union-busters, and I know they're not called union-busters here, cause, 
you couldn't say that here, however, these people have a great reputation 
that are being hired, to deal with the union, they have a great reputation....
in defusing the unions. And those people cost alot of money. So all this 
money that we're raising to save electricity, we're spending on Arbitron 
ratings, and union-busters. That's a little confusing for a voice that's 
supposed to be a democratic voice.........

Mark Schubb's response to Sally Marr's comments on union-busting.

Mark: Uh, the other thing is, y'know, I just hear it over and over again, 
the stuff about union busters, and it's a bunch of specious nonsense. It's 
not accurate. It's not accurate. It's not what happened, it's not what's 
happening, it's not the policy, it's not the activity, of what's been 
going on. We've been negotiating in good faith. To negotiate a contract. 
I have not hired this group American Consulting Group to do it, uh, they 
were involved before my time, to the tune of about a thousand dollars of 
their [unintelligible] time......

[someone chuckles]

Mark: Um, you can laugh, I'm just telling youthe facts as I know them, all 
I know is I turn on, y'know,---I...pieple hand me pieces of paper off the 
Inyernet, saying we spend thirty-thousand ti do this, and so-and-so was 
driven out, and such-and such was done, and this-y'know, and it's garbage, 
it's not accurate. it's not true.

Sally Marr: But, Mark--

Philip Ajofoyinbo: They taught you well....

Charles McClung: Wait a minute, Philip, can you wait 'til it's your turn? 
Okay, go ahead, Sally.

Sally: What is true is there are people being laid off, to conserve money, 
and the people at the vert op are getting raises. I mean, Pat Scott got a 
raise this year, and then they're saving money on somebody else, so I don't 
understand that.

Mark: Well, the station's run their own economies. In other words, the 
money we raise we spend. If the National Organization is doing well, and 
chooses to pay it's executive director more and the Board decides to do 
that, they can do that. Ummm...........

Jonathan Markowitz:  Not counting the sideband leasing.....

Mark: It doesn't come out of our budget. ..Doesn't come out of our budget. 
It comes out of National money. Um, we're not laying people off, we're 
hiring people, at this point, you know.....and I'm hoping to expand the 
staff. That'sd the plan for now. We went through a bugetary crisis where 
people were laid off. It was unfortunate, but it had to be done. It was 
the basic financial policy of the organization that the stations should 
have autonomous budgets. And the National foundation doesn't want to take 
SCA money, which is used for development, the sideband agreements, which 
are used for development, and equipment upgrades, and buiding infrastructure
and filing applications with the FCC to protect the signal, and all that 
stuff, to use that monet for operating expenses ans staff at the local 
level, it's up to the local stations to do a good enough  job to raise 
money to have their own staffs. And that's the operating principle.

um...yeah, it's ...y'know, before it was union-busters, it was racist, 
before it was racist it was oh, uhh...y'know, there's always some---

Philip: Tell me more.

Mark: There's all--Censorship, there's always--

Philip Tell me more....

Mark: There's always some young specious flag being--

Philip: Specious, yeah.

Charles: Philip, will you please wait 'til it's your turn--

Mark: There's always some flag being waved around, amd, you know, maybe, 
uh, sometimes they're real issues and there's real aggrievance, but most 
of the flags I see waved around do not reflect what's actually happening. 
We have a really, serious disagreement, about a union issue. And that is, 
should volunteers, should Pacifica, negotiate with a predominantly 
volunteer group about relations and working conditions of its paid staff. 
Pacifica feels that the National Labor Relations act and all the law and 
all the body of principle behind the labor movement says that you negotiate
your labor contracts with your employees. Um, and that, and the UE chapter 
in New York feels that its appropriate that 90% of the people who are 
negotiating be volunteers. We disagree, we're going to the National Labor 
Relations Board for clarification. I don't think that's union-busting, I 
think it's a disagreement. Um, its unprecedented, I don't know of any 
other situation where an organization negotiates the wages and working 
conditions for its paid staff with a group of volunters. The management of 
the Foundaion and the---

Sally: The volunters are the base of the station, Mark, they're what run 
the station.

Charles: I would rather not...I think we've had a full discussion of that 
particular issue, and, as part of the meeting, and I think that, at this 
point, there's nothing we can do at this level, to deal with it. We're 
aware of it, it is before the NLRB, anf there's gong to be response, and 
as I said before when Vince was talking, it's not an....it's just in the 
middle of a negotiation right now. It's not the end, we know what the 
position is, we know there's alot of people in the group don't agree with 
that. And it's gonna take, it's gonna go through a long process. I did 
want to add one thing, in reponse to what Mark was saying about 
union-busting. There was a long discussion about the issue of whether, 
uh, the folks and the consultants that we were using, were union busters, 
and some very, pretty, relatively thorough research was done into that by 
members of the National Board, and they could not confirm that there was 
any connection between the folks that we were using directly, our lawyers, 
and union-busting. So--

Vince: 'Get it to ya.

Charles: If you have that information, please give it to me.

Tony Navarro: How about the firms you're using?  How about the firms 
you're using?

Charles: Thant's what I'm saying, there was no connection. Anyway, I need 
to move on, because there's still a couple more people. Philip hasn't had 
a chance to talk but the next person is Peter.


*     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

Charles: Philip's our next speaker, I want him to get a chance to talk. Go 
ahead, Philip.

Philip: Should I go?

Charles: Yeah.

Philip: First of all Charles, I just have to, start out by saying it's 
very hard to sit here and...and have one's intelligence insulted over and 
over again, by some of the information that's being put out by Mark 
[Schubb]. To think that a company, an outfit that works---

Charles: I've got to interrupt you for a second,

Philip:---for a large---

Charles: Philip---I've got to interrupt you. Part of the ground rules are 
that you don't make any personal attacks of the people---

Philip: This is---

Charles: Please make your---I wanna-

Philip: I'm reacting to what----

Charles: Please make your comment without reference to..... our manager

Philip: To the person who said something? Who is making an argument that 
on the face of it, I mean----

Charles: Go ahead and make your point.

Philip: It is insulting...I was going to, and then you stopped me. To 
think that an outfit which is called American Consulting Group which has 
contracted with, you know, Fortune 500 companies, is going to work for a
one-year contract for a thousand dollars, consulting on two, uh, three 
stations, that just stretches credulity beyond the breaking point. 
[Someone else makes some sort of exclamation at this point] And one of the 
things I've asked to stop, is the insulting of the intelligence of 
listener-sponsors and spoonfeeding and...obviously, they've taught you 
well, how to.....

Charles: Hey, Phil, I'm gonna have to stop you. Once again, you've made a 
personal attack on our manager........

[Mark Schubb starts to say something]

Charles: Mark--wait a second, wait a second...wait, wait, please. Philip, 
I have to ask you to abide by the ground rules, that we not personally 
attack---

Philip: When I say, when I say "you," I'm talking about the Pacifica 
Foundation.

Charles: Okay........

Philip: Who contracted American Consulting Group? Did you, Mark?

Charles: No one did.

Mark Never.

Chas: No one has.

Philip: When I say "you" I'm talking about Pacifica.

Charles: No one has contracted with that group. So go ahead and finish 
your point please.

Philip: You want to hand me a script in Braille that you want me to read, 
of what I ought to say?

Charles: No, I want you to abide by our--

Philip: Then let me say what I want to say.

Charles: As long as you abide by our rules, that's fine. They're very 
simple rules, you just can't attack the other members-----

Philip: is there a dirty laundry policy at Board meetings as well as on 
the air?

Charles: No.

Philip: Then let me say what I want to say.

Charles Go ahead.

Philip: Okay. That's the one thing. The other thing that I'm really...I 
have a lot of confusion about, is maybe somebody can clear this up...can 
somebody explain the difference between the regular meetings that Pacifica 
used to have, that were open, and the minutes were released, and all that, 
so what one would expect to be an open meeting...I want to know the 
distinction between those meetings of yesteryear, or whatever, and the....
the conference meetings on the phone, that we were just told preceded the 
retreat...and then finally, the retreat...I'm having a hard time 
semantically getting a handle on what the distinction between all these 
different kinds of meetings are. What separates.....

Charles: Go ahead and finish your comments and I'll be happy to respond to 
that.

Philip: Yeah, Okay...what separates the regular meeting from a conference 
phone meeting from a retreat, and then, as part of that, I guess, is it 
known when the next, when the retreating will end, let's put it that way. 
Is there a point in time when real meetings will be back, and so, I'd like 
to know that. Finally, the whole issue of measuring out people that you're 
reaching, for the ratings and all of that, usually, the people that are 
consulted with to help with these kinds of things have notions of an 
audience profile. Is there now some notion of the kind of audience profile 
that KPFK or Pacifica would like to achieve, and if so, can somebody, is 
it public information to describe for us what that audience profile is? 
There'd be no point having the measurements unless you had some idea of 
what you'd like to come up with, as a profile for the typical 
KPFK/Pacifica listener. Those are my questions.

Charles: Okay, well first I'm gonna try to respond to your questions about 
the Pacifica meetings, and then I'll see if Mark has any information that 
he can provide to you on the second question. We've talked about them all, 
and so, maybe the discussion has been a little bit confusing, so I'm gonna 
try to...It's a little bit repetitive of what we said before. Right now 
there are meetings beingheld, regular public meetings, in the old way that 
you described. And these are regular, they're quarterly, and the next one 
will be in september in New Yo

[Philip starts to say something]

Charles: Let me finish, if I'm not--you can ask a follw-up question if the 
explanation doesn't satisfy you. But let me finish the explanation first, 
okay? [Philip continues to speak] If I don't finish the sentence, you 
won't be able to tell whether I would have answered it, and if you 
interrupt, then I'll never, it's like this endless cycle that never 
answers itself. The difference between these meetings and the ones that we 
had, say, ten years ago, we discussed earlier, is that the minutes of the 
meeting are no longer being distributed to members of the general public. 
Now it is my position, and I sadi to you earlier, that I disagree with 
that, but that's the current policy of Pacifica, and I'm working to try to 
change that policy. So, when will that change? As soon as they see the 
light. But that's a good idea, and I agree with you, on that particular 
point. 

Now, I want to discuss the other two points that you brought up, because 
they're important as well. The notion of the retreat, and the strategic
planning process has been carried out in conjuction with the meetings. In
other words, there have been board meetings...at each of these quarterly 
meetings throughout this time period, but during the strategic planning 
process, there's been an additional bunch of work, that the board and the 
staff people have been doing, regarding brainstorming, essentially. That's 
what it is.  Brainstorming about what to do to help Pacifica fullfill its
mission, okay?  And that process of brainstorming has not completed, and 
you legitimately ask when that will be completed, the target date for 
having that completed had been, originally, this last meeting, it was put 
to the next meeting, which is in September, but I told you guys earlier, 
at this meeting, it would be my feeling, based upon being at this last 
meeting, that this also will not end in September, because the issues that
people are discussing are still at a much...they're still at a 
brainstorming level...and they haven't formulated themselvs or 
crystallized in terms of policy, other than some issues we brought up 
here, concerning real audio and the internet.  But the retreat will 
continue until results in a final, what I would call strategiv plan, 
which will then be presented to the Board in a public way, and it will be, 
approved or not appreoved at that time by the Pacifica Board. The 
conference calls that are taking place in the interim are ways of saving 
money, and being able to have the strategic planning process continue, at 
times when we're not at a meeting, in a formal...at one of the Pacifica 
stations. 

What is going on in those conference calls is the same folks meeting in 
smaller groups, with the facilitator, usually, are doing the same 
brainstorming process. And, they're not making any decisions, no decisions 
are being made, it's a brainstorming process in which the ideas of the 
subcommittes are then brought back to the full brainstorming committee of 
the whole, and then actions will be taken later on. None have been taken 
yet. Okay, now that's basically the distinction between the different kinds
 of meetings...is there something you wanted to ask following up on that 
specifically?