Staffers at Pittsburgh Community Broadcasting Corp. have ratified their first union contract after nearly two years of negotiations.
“This is a historic day for PCBC, for those of us who work here, and for the community we serve,” said the union’s six-member bargaining committee in a Thursday press release. “Pittsburgh is a union town, and we are proud to serve it as a unionized station. We’re proud as well of this contract, which underscores the value our members offer to the station and the region as a whole.”
PCBC owns and operates public radio stations WYEP and WESA. The union, represented by the Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, consists of 27 hosts, music directors, reporters, editors, digital content staff and other content creators, according to the release. The union represents about a third of staff.
According to a WESA news article, the contract prohibits management from “using a worker’s likeness or voice in new AI products” or “people’s original work for machine learning or synthetic content creation. And if the company wants to expand its use of the technology, the union gets to reopen the contract.”
Those are “some of the strongest protections in the country” regarding use of AI, according to the union’s release. The union said the three-year contract also includes “enhanced wages and time-off benefits” and “memorializes a shared commitment to diversity and inclusion.”
“We are pleased that the many months of hard work by members of our respective bargaining teams have resulted in this Agreement, which is the initial contract between our organization and SAG-AFTRA,” said PCBC CEO Terry O’Reilly in a press release. “We are looking forward to working with SAG-AFTRA and its members in our work to provide the highest-quality public media service to the more than two-million residents of Western Pennsylvania.”
The staffers voted to form a union in 2022. Negotiations began in early 2023.
“We believe we should have meaningful input into our role in the station’s future, and this is best accomplished through a formal collective-bargaining process,” the staffers said in a petition at the time.