T
Tilden
Guest
With iHeart refusing to honor passed union agreements with the WBZ Radio personnel will there be a strike at WBZ ?
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I doubt they would strike as long as they are CBS employees, but the second the LMA kicks in, ( when the Ocean States Trust takes WKOX in divestiture) they will no longer be CBS Employees... IMHO at that moment the employees that will then become I Heart worker drones will have to take a vote to be represented by a union.
That will give them some protections, and the NLRB might give them some cover, but I fear I Heart will identify potential union sympathizers and decline to offer them employment, and they will probably be on pretty solid ground in doing so.
The other group of people who are going to get hosed in this deal are the the ones that left Total Traffic for CBS's new traffic contractor on April 1 of this year.
Entercom uses I Heart's news and traffic reporters, and once I Heart gets hold of WBZ you know they are putting their people back on 1030.
your thoughts?
That will give them some protections, and the NLRB might give them some cover, but I fear I Heart will identify potential union sympathizers and decline to offer them employment, and they will probably be on pretty solid ground in doing so.
The other group of people who are going to get hosed in this deal are the the ones that left Total Traffic for CBS's new traffic contractor on April 1 of this year.
Entercom uses I Heart's news and traffic reporters, and once I Heart gets hold of WBZ you know they are putting their people back on 1030.
your thoughts?
Looking through the list of AFTRA-SAG markets around the country, I see a lot of places around the country that have iHeart and Total Traffic members. So I don't believe iHeart is anti-union. I imagine the terms are spelled out in the contract. I read in the Globe that iHeart is asking employees to re-apply for their jobs. That's not an unusual request, nor is it usually restricted to union employees. There will be changes in benefits packages and other things once ownership changes. I've experienced ownership changes myself in the past. Everything gets re-signed, but seniority is usually retained, based on one's original hiring date.
Remembering back to some of my union negotiations and NLRB sessions, I believe that the union will have to re-certify under a new ownership corporation, and iHeart can take "advantage" of the moment to sort out employees they don't want or need under the guise of a "reduction in force". That is sometimes a tactic to take out union leaders, or to make others wary of re-certifying.
I'll bet the workforce was much bigger at WBZ when the union first organized the shop. Today, with smaller staff size, there seems to have been a general reduction in unionized stations.
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