Features

Commentary: KPFA Workers Call for Violence-Free Station, No Harassment By KPFA UNION STEWARDS

Tuesday September 13, 2005

Marc Sapir’s op-ed in defense of KPFA’s General Manager Roy Campanella II (“Coup Crystallizes Inside KPFA—Again?” Aug. 19) abandons reasoned analysis for a one-sided polemic, riddled with errors and hyperbole. Sapir appears to be singularly misinformed about the facts of the disturbing labor dispute at KPFA—a conflict that should concern all who care about this crucial 56-year-old institution and the vitality of the left in the Bay Area and Central Valley. If Sapir had bothered to check his facts, instead of repeating Campanella’s spin almost verbatim, he would have found that he was being sold a bill of goods. 

Here are the charges, compiled from multiple sources: 

• Within weeks of being hired, Campanella propositions women workers at the station, makes sexual and inappropriate comments to women, offers one the job of her colleague while making sexually suggestive remarks to her, spreads rumors about plans to fire a woman who stands up to him, and creates a pervasively hostile work environment for KPFA women. (Only one woman even alleges that Campanella invited her to the movies, contrary to Sapir/Campanella’s claims.) When challenged about his actions, he claims that the women came on to him, and then retaliates against women who organize themselves at the station. He publicly belittles women who turned him down and participated in an investigation into his conduct, threatens to cut their funding, criticizes their work to their supervisors, and other retaliatory behavior. 

• Pacifica conducts an investigation into the multiple complaints about Campanella by the women at the station; unfortunately the investigation is full of errors and the women involved see it as a whitewash. While Pacifica states it is unable to “determine conclusively” whether sexual harassment has taken place, it finds that Campanella has acted a manner not consistent with “Pacifica’s expectations of a general manager” and he is told that he must change his behavior or could face consequences up to termination. 

• Campanella allows a woman worker to be forced off a program where she was facing a hostile work environment, saying that he could do nothing to protect her, despite her pleas to him as manager of the station. 

• On May 5, Campanella threatens Hard Knock Radio executive producer Weyland Southon and follows him out of the building to the sidewalk to fight, in violation of Pacifica’s “Zero Tolerance for Violence Policy” which states: “Any employee engaging in any type of threatened or actual violence against any employee, or the Pacifica Foundation itself, will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. 

• Eight women workers at the station file with the Department of Fair Employment and Housing, alleging sexual harassment and retaliation by Campanella. The women specifically choose to go to the DFEH because it will not monetarily harm the station. If the state agency finds their claims to be correct, the DFEH will demand the station take action to rectify the problem, rather than awarding a cash settlement to the women. 

• The union of the paid staff, CWA Local 9415, files with the National Labor Relations Board on behalf of seven male and female workers at the station for Campanella’s multiple violations of labor law, which guarantees workers the right to organize and assemble freely, as well as guarantees a safe and violence-free workplace. 

• The Local Station Board, which hired Campanella last November, employed a lawyer to investigate the allegations. As board member Joe Wanzala has told the press, the lawyer recommended that Campanella be terminated. Shockingly, in spite of this, the highly politicized board votes to keep Campanella in the job, despite the mounting liability in which he has mired the station. Even before the board completed its investigation into Campanella’s conduct, three board members publicly attack workers’ motives and dismissed their complaints. 

Unfortunately, despite the struggle to save KPFA from hijacking by Mary Frances Berry and the Pacifica National Board in 1999, the station has been left with another out-of-control board. Members of the Local Station Board were elected with as few votes as 400 each—out of a listener-membership of 25,000 and an estimated listenership of 200,000—and as a consequence, the board is made up of many people who have narrow political agendas and regularly attack the workers that produce KPFA’s programs (for example, circulating an e-mail suggesting that one long-time programmer used to be on the payroll of the CIA). Animosity to the staff is veiled by sweeping claims that KPFA workers are resistant to change and participation by the listeners. 

Sapir’s odd tale about coup plots and hostility to listener input raises some basic questions: Why would 91 workers on whom the progressive community of northern and central California rely daily for news and analysis on injustice, labor struggles, war and empire, as well as diverse music and arts programming, conspire collectively to ask for the termination of a manager without cause? How would that even be possible in a group known for healthy differences in opinion? How is it that 80 percent of the paid staff and 20 percent of the unpaid staff make up a “dissident group” at the station? And if opposition to Campanella at KPFA is really motivated by an aversion to diversity and change at the station, then why are the central characters in the dispute younger people and people of color? Could it be possible that the workers claims are valid? 

Sapir’s commentary also gets other facts wrong, including the number of workers at the station (approximately 225, not 300) and the financial health of KPFA. Contrary to Sapir’s claims, expenditures do not exceed income. Sapir claims that KPFA has 42 full-time workers when in fact the accurate number for full-time equivalences (FTEs) is 38. Of those, 1.8 FTEs are funded by grants and cost KPFA nothing, bringing the number of FTEs paid for by KPFA to about 36.2. Additionally, Sapir alleges that the number of FTEs increased dramatically by comparing an inflated version of today’s numbers to the artificial low following the 1999 lock out, when there was an exodus of workers from KPFA and a hiring freeze was imposed on the station by Pacifica. It’s also worth noting that KPFA workers currently raise twice the money that they did before the lockout. 

We believe that Pacifica should not allow workers and women to be treated by the manager in ways that justifiably outrage progressives when they happen to workers at Mitsubishi or Denny’s. The Pacifica National Board has the power to overturn the Local Station Board’s vote and remove Campanella, but it needs to hear from concerned listeners. To contact the National Board, or to find out more about the workers‚ allegations, go to www.kpfaworker.org. 

 

KPFA Union Stewards: 

Lisa Ballard, Webmaster 

Sasha Lilley, Against the Grain 

Philip Maldari, Morning Show 

Mark Mericle, KPFA News