NPR in talks with NABET; AFTRA to rep web workers
Originally published in Current, Sept. 18, 2000
By Mike JanssenYou don't have to look much past your monitor to see how computers are changing the news biz. Writers for web sites do much the same work as their old-media counterparts, and radio journalists take to digital editing suites while leaving grease pencils and razor blades behind.
Such high-tech changes have become a backdrop for NPR's negotiations with two major broadcast unions. The forthcoming agreements could redraw long-standing jurisdictional lines, and possibly affect NPR's evolving Internet strategy.
Representatives of the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians (NABET) and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) have been talking with NPR recently to ink agreements that together will cover over 300 network employees.
NABET and NPR have been working on a contract for a year, following the union's April 1999 certification to represent about 70 technical staffers at NPR's headquarters and New York, Chicago and Los Angeles bureaus.
The union and NPR last exchanged proposals in August [2000]. Both parties continue to bargain in good faith, NPR says.
The technicians' efforts to organize go back to 1998, when NPR repeatedly challenged NABET victories in employee representation elections. The network cited "irregularities" in administration of voting procedures, and the National Labor Relations Board overturned at least one election.
Since NABET's certification, the union and NPR have exchanged proposals to establish pay rates, work hours, and rules governing what technicians—and NPR's journalists—can and can't do. NPR's technicians, producers and reporters have worked under an in-house jurisdictional policy since 1989, and the negotiations with NABET afford a unique chance to revise rules that network journalists find restrictive at times. For some, the creative process is at stake.
"We certainly want [the technicians] to get a good, fair contract," says NPR correspondent Eric Westervelt, who reports from the Northeast. "There are, however, some practical things that reporters in the field would like more flexibility to do."
Under current jurisdictional rules, for example, Westervelt can't do a "phoner"--a phone interview in which he records both ends of the conversation. "So, wink wink, nudge nudge, no one in the field does their own phoners. We all go through a Washington engineer," he says with sarcasm. "That's absurd," he says.
Westervelt is allowed to feed audio into his laptop to trim actualities and sound with Cool Edit before sending them to a technician in Washington. But he's not allowed to assemble the snippets of audio and mix it into a final story himself. That's work for a technician in Washington.
"In an ideal world, some field-based reporters, myself included, would like to occasionally mix our stories on the laptop, or at least be able to do a rough mix and have some more control over that mix," he says. "There are times when reporters would like to do their own mix, if they have a clearer idea of exactly how they want it to sound. But right now, that seems to be something NPR can't afford, and it's not always practical, so we live with the current rules."
Westervelt has shared his thoughts with his AFTRA shop steward, but at this stage of negotiations, it's unclear if NPR and NABET will reach an agreement giving reporters more freedom to record sound and mix stories. NPR management would not comment on specifics of the NABET negotiations, and technicians did not return calls seeking comment. NABET's staff representative for NPR also could not be reached for comment.
Union label on web site?
In a separate development, a handful of NPR Online staffers joined AFTRA in mid-August after the union realized that online staff and the journalists in NPR's AFTRA unit were doing similar work, says Ken Greene, assistant executive director of the union's Washington-Baltimore chapter.
The challenge came during NPR's efforts to expand its online activity. NPR's board and management are considering an alliance with a for-profit or nonprofit partner to boost its Internet efforts. NPR could not be reached for comment on the negotiations, but Greene says the network didn't want to limit its options. "They wanted to ensure that they have the flexibility that they need," Greene says. "We were confident that would not be a problem, because AFTRA has never regarded the contract as an obstacle."
AFTRA raised the NPR Online jurisdiction question in a grievance against NPR and, after failing to resolve the dispute in a series of meetings, the union and the network entered arbitration Aug. 1-3. Arbitration also failed, but NPR agreed that AFTRA would represent nine NPR Online employees involved in production.
AFTRA also has started renegotiating the contract held by 220 other NPR employees, and hopes to bring the online workers under the same agreement. The current four-year contract was slated to expire at the end of September, but has been extended to Oct. 31 [2000].
Web page posted Nov. 13, 2000
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