Fighting to stave off a $60,000 operating-buget deficit, KPFK last week laid off two of its three news programmers and the editor of the folio program guide, triggering protest from both station union members and programming volunteers. Most of them caught "progressive flu" last Thursday and failed to show up for work.

The layoffs effect KPFK programming, as the station's evening local-news broadcast has been replaced by a rebroadcast of the Pacifica Network News, now heard at 3 and 6 p.m. News director Frank Stoltze, the sole remaining paid member of the news staff, will continue to anchor the morning news reports, assisted by a corps of 15 news volunteers.

The 24-hour stationwide sick-out, beginning with Roy of Hollywood at midnight and ending with Michael Benner's Inner Vision the following night had complete support form the 15 remaining non-management staff and most of the day shift volunteers. KPFK depends on volunteers for everything from programming to operating soundboards to answering telephones.

Listeners who tuned in during the sick out heard a number of tapes from the Pacifica Archives, located in the same building as the studio, as interim program director Gwen Walters and interim station manager Pamela Burton substituted them them for the regularly scheduled programs. Of more than 15 shows set to be aired, only half followed their normal routine.

Union members at the station say many of the recent lay-offs there conflicted with the union's contract and resulted in several grievances being filed with the National Labor Relations Board. "What we have here is a situation where Pacifica is not practicing what it preaches ," says KPFK co-production director and union steward Lyn Gerry. "Pacifica Radio is always saying over the airwaves that it supports union movements around the country, and at the same time, Pacifica's management is violating the contract of its own union."

Since the onset of the fiscal crisis. brought on by the lower-than -expected subscription renewal rates and direct-marketing returns as well as what Burton terms "mistakes made" by her predecessors, station managers and employees have both seen their pay and their hours diminish. Last fall, employees took a 9 percent pay cut and last week began an ambitious job sharing program, turning full time positions into two or more part-time jobs. In March, however, station managers decided additional measures were required and issued lay-off notices to 8 of the stations 17 non-management staff.

Union members complained that many of the cuts violated contract provisions , left management unscathed, and seemed to punish "problem" employees. "The layoffs were against certain individuals," says Gerry, who herself was laid off and later reinstated."They figured they would eliminate those people they considered undesirables, and later, quietly replace them with other more compliant workers, or with volunteers."

Station manager Burton, however, says the lay-offs are necessary to insure station solvency and were taken as a last resort. "I never feel good about laying people off. But we have a $60,000 deficit which the [Pacifica national] board is forcing us to take action on." Coupled with an additional $170,000 in shaky funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, an agency facing elimination at the national level, KPFK is being forced to deal with an increasingly dire financial picture.

For now the situation seems stalemated. Though negotiations are continuing, with management seeking concessions to allow the nightly local news to resume, the mood at the station remains, in the words of one union member, "chilly."

"News is important but it's not everything," says Burton, asserting favorable listener response to recent program switches. "We cannot afford to run this station for the programmers. We have to run it for the listeners."