At an AFTRA meeting a member asked if BBR talent were union. The person on the dais said Bloomberg's salaries and benefits were so good there's no reason to organize the shop.
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WBBR 20th Anniversary
- Thread starter wadio
- Start date
Actually, over the 20-years of its existence, most of the time, the answer would have been: Most of the "talent" on WBBR are AFTRA members, but it isn't a union shop, because the salary and benefit packages exceed what is offered to employees at AFTRA stations.
I just did a quick count, and of the more than a dozen news types I have known personally who worked at BBR only one or two might not have been AFTRA members before working there. Many were attracted there by offers of bigger pay checks and better benefits. Bloomberg wanted the best people and was willing to pay to get them.
Of course many of those folks were let go when the BBR staff was radically downsized and some Bloomberg-TV audio was substituted for content specifically produced for radio a couple of years back. As far as I know, only one of my old AFTRA station co-workers is still employed on-air at BBR, the others have all departed for various reasons, including being let go in the mass job termination.
Sorry to hear that the free gourmet food is no longer a perk. I worked at other places that offered employees a free restaurant style lunch, but Congress changed that by making the value of those "free lunches" taxable to employees, and the companies responded by having the employees pay "something" for lunch, although not restaurant prices. I think they paid the actual cost of the food itself, while the company paid the cafeteria staff and the rest of the overhead.
At last report, Google still not only offers its employees free food, but free haircuts, free massages, transportation to and from work, free child care, and even free laundry and dry cleaning services. The idea is to simplify the employees life so they can concentrate on their jobs. No doubt, Google is run by smart people who need to hire lots of other very smart people. I've seen reports that its easier to get into Harvard than to get a job at Google.
Back when Bloomberg was starting his now big company he took the same attitude, but he used to have his desk in the newsroom, and he ate that restaurant quality food too. You have to wonder if that gourmet quality benefit stopped when "the boss" left his dollar a year job at the company, for his dollar-a-year job as the mayor and started eating elsewhere?
Actually, it is doubtful that Mayor Mike will return to any kind of active day-to-day management role at Bloomberg LP when he leaves office a year from now.
The mayor has stated many times that he expects to spend his time after that philanthropically giving away his Billions, with the stated goal of "bouncing the check to the undertaker."
TimeIsTight said:
From my experience, a better answer would have been "Most of the 'talent' on WBBR were AFTRA members."
When I was offered an overnight anchor position there, it was contingent on my "leaving" the union. When I protested that this would affect my voiceover business, I was asked how much more it would take to "buy me out," since ""Mike" didn't like his employees working second jobs.
I opted not to take that position.
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