Responding to Doug variously (see below):
I think others have already contributed to an understanding of why yours is not a good analogy. I would add that there are three key things to keep in mind:
(1) Staff, through representation on the Local Station Board *did* (do) play a role in hiring the GM. In fact, during the GM hire process, the listener representative Riva Enteen, Sepideh Khosrowjah and Michael Lubin were removed and/or quit the Hiring Committee because of disagreements with the staff reps (led by Sasha Lilley) /and pro-management reps (led by Marnie Tattersall) so that faction effectively had control over selecting the two finalists in the GM hire. The Executive Director Dan Coughlin made the final decision.
(2) When Roy took office the listener reps on the board (wrongly, but based on what transpired in the hiring process) viewed him as a pro-staff/management hire. This staff manangement alliance collapsed when Roy Campanella turned out to be his own man and did not carry water for the staff, and had the audacity to revist the Democracy Now/Morning Show time change as well as being even-handedly supportive of all programmers - including the much maligned Dennis Bernstein and his Flashpoints team - who he had been told, early in his tenure, by the staff at the station (who at the time viewed him as their hire and hopefully their hatchet man), was one of the problems he was supposed to 'fix'. Incidentally the campaign to fire Roy is also a campaign to get rid of Flashpoints.
(3) For many eons, KPFA workers - paid and unpaid - were members of the United Electrical Workers. A key component of the Pat Scott effort to pacify Pacifica in the 1990s included mass purges of unpaid staff. In order to effect this, Scott & Co . realized that they had to get rid of the collective bargaining rights of the unpaid staff. SO, CIRCA 1996, MANY OF THE STAFF AT NOW COMPLAINING THAT THEIR RIGHTS AS WORKERS ARE BEING TRAMPLED ON, VOTED TO LEAVE THE UEW, AND JOIN THE COMMUNICATIONS WORKERS OF AMERICA AND AS PART OF THE DEAL, TO EXCLUDE UNPAID STAFF FROM THE UNION. THIS ENTIRE PROCESS WAS PRESIDED OVER BY THE AMERICAN CONSULTING GROUP, A NOTORIOUS UNIION BUSTING OUTFIT. - why is this important apart from what is obvious? A major program at KPFA is money. There are too many FTEs in the budget. Efforts to address this problem are being cast as union busting. In other words, the defition of 'work' has been narrowed to include only those who get paid - and the unpaid staff, even though nominally acknowledged as 'workers' are not deemed to have any rights.
Doug, the listenership has been defined as anyone who listens. The membership is those who make a financial contribution. This is the same for all public radio stations. If the electorate is dominated by 'oddballs', well Doug, I suggest sending them off to Guantanamo for a little re-education, I really see no other alternative here, do you?
Lastly, on a more serious note, yes, Pacifica governance is pretty screwed up - by not any more so than the Sierra Club, or any other major member-based non-profit organization with a democratic governance model. The issue is whether you take the position that it is all a waste of time and hopeless (as you seem to) , or if you take the position, as I do, that if enough good people (broadly defined) put enough Sisyphusian energy into making Pacifica work, then perhaps, someday we shall all be free.'
Joe W.
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Doug wrote: How do you feel about workers at other institutions selecting their manager and having control over the workplace? Would that be a good model for a ball-bearing factory, but not a radio station? Or should the ball-bearing workers just yield to management too?
There are a lot of complicated issues here. How do you define the listenership? Are there residency requirements? The kind of programming the station features will, to a large extent, determine the listenership. What if that programming is so weird and marginal that the listenership dwindles to a hardy band of weird, marginal survivors? Are they the constituency? What if the electorate is domianted by the oddballs who have nothing better to do with their lives? How can that listenership, however defined, understand who the candidates are, and what the issues are? The actual practice of current Pacifica governance, however it sounds on paper, is pretty screwed up.
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