Dear WBAI Contributor/Supporter/Listener:
We are the Staff of Pacifica radio station WBAI-FM, and we are asking for your help. We are the people whom you hear on the air, the people who interview you and your colleagues on issues important to you, the people who publicize the events of your organizations, the people who bring you the news that never gets covered in the mainstream media, and the people who entertain you with radio you won't hear anywhere else. We produce the programs, we perform the engineering duties that keep the station on the air, we are the clerical workers, the people who clean the floors, handle the switchboard and carry out the many other duties which have kept WBAI on the air for the past 36 years. Some of us are Paid Staff and some of us are Unpaid Staff.
We have a Union at WBAI (the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, Local 404) and right now that Union is under attack, not by external forces of the far right, but by WBAI and Pacifica Management.
WBAI Management is demanding that all Unpaid Staff be removed from the Collective Bargaining Unit and be denied Union protection. WBAI Management also wants to designate some Paid Staff workers as vulnerable to being discharged without just cause, even though "emloyment at will" has been denounced on WBAI's air waves for decades. These two actions alone would remove about 90% of the current Collective Bargaining Unit and strip away the rights of these workers.
Additionally, WBAI Management has presented demands for a new Union Contract with a "No Strike Clause" that allows for the discharge of anyone who participates in even an informational picket line at what was formerly described as "Free speech radio, WBAI-New York.1" Union Shop Stewards would be obligated to help Management stop any job actions by workers. Such clauses have been denounced on WBAI 's air in the past.
In January WBAI had a record-breaking "Million Dollar Marathon" which raised $1,024,000 in pledges for the station. In May the fund drive raised over $700,000 in pledges. WBAI has ended its last fiscal year with a six figure surplus, but WBAI Management has demanded a long list of financial give backs from the Paid Staff.
Unionized employees in sister Pacifica station KPFK (Los Angeles) have found that Pacifica has employed the high priced services of a firm that brags about its skill in union busting to deal with the unions out there. Pacifica has spent $30,000 so far on trying to bust the unions in California. We are seeing the same tactics being used by WBAI Management.
WBAI is owned by the Pacifica Foundation, which is based in Berkeley, California. WBAI is required to give the Pacifica Foundation 13% of its gross income every year, in addition to giving the receipts from one full day of every marathon to funding Pacifica's national programming.
We do not think that you, the listener-sponsors of WBAI, ever meant your contributions to the station to be used for the purpose of busting a union or killing community radio.
The motivation for the union busting is thought to be to allow the Paid and Unpaid Staff to be reduced and in some cases replaced so that when the Pacifica Foundation is ready, in about three years, it can take over the air of WBAI and the other stations with Pacifica 's own national programming, leaving little or no air time for local, community input or production.
Pacifica has already mandated WBAI and the other Pacifica stations install a highly sophisticated satellite receiving facility which has the ability to turn WBAI into an "automatic station," which is a radio station that is computer controlled and fed programming via satellite. WBAI could have bought a much simpler, and cheaper, satellite receiver, but it was made to buy the vastly more expensive one, even though Pacifica and WBAI are always financially strapped. The only satellite transmitting station in Pacifica is located at the California headquarters of the Pacifica Foundation. It is projected that Pacifica will be able to take over most of WBAI 's air with its national programming in three years. This transition to nationally controlled programming will be much easier if unions and community people are no longer around to resist the abandonment of Pacifica 's original mission and mandate.
The people at the core of this union busting strategy are the Pacifica National Board, the Executive Director of the Pacifica Foundation, the WBAI Local Board and WBAI Management.
We need your help to convince them that the listeners in the WBAI signal area do not want to see WBAI bust its union or become just another non-commercial radio station carrying programs off the satellite.
We need you to contact the people below. Call them, write them, fax them, let them know that you do not want the WBAI union busted. Let them know that you want WBAI to continue to be a strong, alternative voice providing the community access that no one else provides.
Jack O 'Dell Cecelia McCall Frank Millspaugh
306 2190 West 7 St. 392 C.P.W. #17K 32 King St.
Vancouver, British Columbia New York, NY 10025 New York, NY 10014
Canada V6K4K7 212-866-6567 212-741-0839
604-731-1848
June Makela Charlotte Holloman Ambrose Lane
267 E. 7 St. 1625.5 19 St. NW 7800 Flagstone Ct.
New York, NY 10009 Washington, DC 20009 Ellicot City, MD 21043
212-673-9225 202-234-0180 410-796-1918
Leonor Lizardo Janis Hazel Dr. Moneim Fadali
1721 Lucretia Ave. 211 Harry S. Truman Dr. #13 2105 Beverly Blvd., suite 225
Los Angeles, CA 90026 Largo, MD 20772 Los Angeles, CA 90057
213-250-8201 301-499-5372 213-664-3918
Michael Palmer David Assman Alexis Gonzales
1001 Bayland Ave. 1067 Filbert St. 260 San Jose Ave.
Houston, TX 77009 San Francisco, CA 90026 San Francisco, CA 94110
713-862-3414 415-673-3881 415-648-6230
Roger Scarbrough Roberta Brooks Pat Scott, Exec. Dir.
906 Stonecrest St. 938 Shattuck Ave. Pacifica Foundation
Houston, TX 77018 Berkeley, CA 94707 1929 Martin Luther King Way
713-869-8401 510-527-5740 Berkeley, CA 94704
510-428-9196
WBAI Local Board
Dick Demenus J. Raynald Louis Eugene Straus
115 W 23 St. 48-5037th St. #4-J 258 Riverside Dr.
New York, NY 10011 LIC, NY 11101 New York, NY 10025
212-924-3064 718-729-0462 212-866-0911
Nan Rubin Frieda Zames Steve Post
4700 Broadway #2-J 60 First Avenue #2-F 155 West 71st St.
New York, NY 10040 New York, NY 10009 New York, NY 10023
212-463-7411 212-673-9225 212-877-4998
Milton Zisman Bill Henning Hank Kee
104 Warwick Circle 45-54 39th Pl. 42-24 Colden Street
Springfield, NJ 07081 Sunnyside, NY 11104 Flushing, NY 11355
201-376-5629 718-392-6094 718-539-3202
Camille Rodriguez Charles Potter Michio Kaku
200 Clinton St. 6-D 838 West End Av #6D % Physics Dept.
Brooklyn, NY 11201 New York, NY 10025 City Univ. of NY
212-772-5695 212-866-1123 New York, NY 10031
William Banks Felix Hester Lynne McVeigh
% WNYE 45-53 206th St. 99 Bank Street #7-J
112 Tillary Street Bayside, NY 11361 New York, NY 10014
Brooklyn, NY 11201 718-224-8208 212-929-4783
718-935-8840
Karen Frillmann Valerie Van Isler Samori Marksman
P.O. Box 4369 General Manager, WBAI Program Director, WBAI
New York, NY 10185 505 8 Ave. 505 8 Ave.
212-698-7189 New York, NY 10018 New York, NY 10018
212-279-0707 x 130 212-279-0707 x 139
We thank you for your help in this struggle to keep WBAI, and its Union, alive.
Labor donated.