Boston Broadcasting Workers Sound
Alarm on Job Security
December 12, 2007
 Technicians and photographers in Boston Local 1228 are making their own news in their struggle to win a contract at television station WCVB that protects bargaining unit jobs in a time of increasing Internet-based broadcasting. Winning their quest for language protecting job security at one of the best-known of powerful Hearst-Argyle’s 26 stations would set a new pattern for broadcasting workers.
The power of the pen has turned into the power of the mouse as Local 1228 members promote their fight for job security—and display their Internet expertise—with a sharp new Web site, www.greedfighters.com. The unionists caused a stir at a recent Christmas tree lighting and family concert in Boston Commons by circulating a leaflet outlining their issues at an event attended by hundreds.
“When I started in broadcasting, we worked in film,” says Andy Dubrovsky, Local 1228 business manager. “When film went to video, we [union members] stayed with the work.” As the parties continue to negotiate on a contract that expired in July, Local 1228 is demanding contract language that will similarly keep Internet broadcasting under the union’s umbrella at the ABC affiliate.
Hearst-Argyle has a major stake in Internet Broadcasting, a Minneapolis-based company that supplies Web services to stations in its chain. Union members, who include engineers, photographers, floor directors and editors, are concerned that nonunion vendors will end up shooting and editing content for WCVB’s Web site.
Accusing the company of “bold-faced greed and arrogance,” the flyer circulated at the Christmas tree lighting said, “WCVB is doing all it can to eliminate our participation in that future under the smokescreen that technology is changing the delivery methods for news and entertainment.”
WCVB President Bill Fine denounced local members for “attacking the station” during the Christmas tree lighting in a story in the Boston Herald.
“It was a public event,” says Dubrovsky. “We are not grinches, we just wanted to get our message out there.”
“Our technicians have won all kinds of awards, making WCVB a prestigious name in television,” says shop steward Karen Lippert, an 18-year news photographer. “We want to be part of the future. This is do or die,” adds Lippert, voicing the concern that content developed for the Web by nonunion workers will make its way back onto TV broadcasts.
Local 1228’s high-profile advocacy efforts have resulted in a tentative contract reached on Dec. 12 covering broadcasting workers at WMUR in Manchester, New Hampshire. Last year, live-van operators and master control personnel at the station voted to join the local’s bargaining unit. A year later, they were still without a first contract. The local picketed outside the TV station during a visit from Sen. Hillary Clinton, and secured letters from several candidates to the station’s president supporting good faith negotiations and a first contract. “The letters and our pickets were the reason that management finally gave us a proposal that we could accept,” says Dubrovsky.
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