[PEN-L:9746] KPFA Staff: "Put it in writing."

[meisenscher <meisenscher@xxxxxxx>]

                 KPFA Employees Say They Won't Come
                 Back Just Yet
                 Workers want budget, no-sale clarified

                 Charles Burress, Chronicle Staff Writer

                                                         Friday, July 30, 1999

                 Workers at embattled KPFA radio in Berkeley said
                 they will not return to work this morning, despite major
                 concessions by management to reopen the station
                 and restore locally controlled programming.

                 Faced with growing protests and public pressure, the
                 station's governing Pacifica Foundation said in a
                 ``goodwill gesture'' Wednesday that it will take the
                 locks off the station at 9 a.m. today, remove the
                 guards and allow workers to come back in and
                 broadcast whatever they want.

                 The offer came two weeks after Pacifica closed the
                 50-year-old listener-sponsored outlet and put the
                 station's paid employees on involuntary paid leave.
                 That action was taken after demonstrators occupied
                 the studios to protest Pacifica's suspension of veteran
                 KPFA producer Dennis Bernstein.

                 But employees said yesterday that they asked for the
                 offer in writing, waited all day for it but did not receive
                 it until after 6 o'clock last night, too late to agree to
                 resume work by this morning. Mark Mericle, a KPFA
                 news director, said that it contained uncertainties that
                 must be clarified.

                 Staff members also sought written assurances that
                 Pacifica will not sell the station and that there are
                 sufficient funds to continue operations.

                 Mary Frances Berry, head of the Pacifica board, said
                 she was ``disappointed'' in the employees' response.
                 She said that the station will open this morning as
                 promised and again Monday and that she hopes
                 employees ``change their minds.''

                 She said that the offer has not changed and that she
                 notified the workers Wednesday when she called top
                 officials of their union, the Communications Workers
                 of America. The offer was also issued in a written
                 press release Wednesday.

                 Philip Maldari, a KPFA program host and member of
                 the KPFA bargaining team in mediation with Pacifica,
                 said that KPFA negotiators received ``no official
                 notification'' before last night and that Berry's earlier
                 verbal statements had inconsistencies.

                 ``If we don't have it in writing, we don't know what's
                 happening,'' he said. ``A press release is not an
                 official statement of an employer to an employee.''

                 Berry stressed, as she did before, that Pacifica has
                 no desire to sell the station, except that it will, in
                 response to a Berkeley City Council resolution, listen
                 to proposals for the city to purchase it. She said she
                 lacks authority to make the promise in writing
                 because only the board can decide what to do with
                 assets.

                 KPFA's other news director, Aileen Alfandary, said
                 that the board ``has to commit itself that there will be
                 no sale of KPFA,'' and that Berry should have brought
                 the return-to- work issue to mediation, rather than
                 ``slap a take-it-or-leave-it proposal on the table.''

                 Alfandary said employees also want assurances that
                 guards, consultants and lawyers hired by Pacifica to
                 deal with the crisis have not depleted the budget,
                 threatening continued operations, not to mention the
                 increased audience outreach that Pacifica demands.

                 Berry said Pacifica will guarantee financial support of
                 the station and that staff members need worry only
                 about programming.

                 The long-running dispute over local control of KPFA
                 flared this spring when Pacifica terminated a popular
                 manager and then dismissed two station veterans for
                 allegedly breaking a rule against talking about the
                 issue on the air. Pacifica's new offer includes lifting
                 the so-called ``dirty laundry'' rule banning the airing of
                 such topics.

                 ©1999 San Francisco Chronicle  Page A19