Excerpt from Paul Rauber's STICKS & STONES column in the East Bay Express of June 21, 1996

The labor situation at the listener-sponsored Pacifica radio stations, including the East Bay's own KPFA-FM, is growing ever more unpleasant, with charges now that American Consulting Group, the firm hired by management to represent it in negotiations, is a "union buster." Indeed, ACG's own publicity material boasts that it "has been involved in more than seven hundred union elections" and that, through its services, "three times that many union efforts were neutralized."

The information about the company comes via a report by Lyn Gerry, a DFE (disgruntled former employee) of Pacifica station KPFK in Los Angeles and a former private investigator. She describes a promotional video in which "a well-scrubbed pitchman advertises how ACG has been helping companies 'stay union-free since 1979.' A list of satisfied clients rolls over his dialogue, including Kraft, Inc., TRW, Nissan, Coca-Cola Enterprises, Sony, Union Carbide, General Dynamics, Dupont, the _Los_Angeles_Times_, exemplars of corporate America whose conduct is so frequently criticized on Pacifica's airwaves." (Logically, ACG represents the Lafayette Park Hotel in Menlo Park, the subject of a longstanding strike by Hotel and Restaurant Employees Local 2850.)

At WBAI, the Pacifica station in New York City, ACG and station manage- ment are asking for a clarification of the bargaining unit, seeking to exclude the unpaid volunteer staff who are currently members of United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America. (Volunteers are also technically a part of the KPFA bargaining unit, although they have not been involved in union negotiations here as they have in New York.) Gerry also alleges that the network is getting rid of "troublemakers" (presumably including herself, a former shop steward) and union activists.

Gerry says that Pacifica has paid ACG "more than $30,000 to fight the union at its Los Angeles station." According to Pacifica's executive director Pat Scott, the figure is more like $2,000, paid for advice for all five stations. Scott says she brought in ACG to help station managers negotiate their contracts. As to their alleged union busting activities, she says, "I have no knowledge of that." Scott does readily admit that she is trying to have volunteers excluded from the stations' bargaining units. "People represented in a bargaining unit are people who are negotiating wages and working conditions," she says. "We fully support that. But volunteers are not employees, and have no place in the bargaining unit."

Meanwhile, the dissident listener group Take Back KPFA says that it will shortly file a formal complaint against Pacifica with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for violating CPB guidelines on open meetings. It is also circulating a copy of the new employee handbook being promulgated by Pacifica, which threatens termination for any employee who discloses "confidential business information" on "labor relations strategies."