>From: "Joseph Wanzala" <jwanzala at hotmail.com>
>Reply-To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] KPFA Agonisties
>Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2005 13:55:34 -0700
>
>
>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.
>
>___________________
>
>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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