Excerpted parts of an article from pacificainexile.org that pertain to LA's KPFK mostly here below:
September 7 2015 pacificinexile posted :
"Grievances To Make Your Head Spin"
"There have been so many grievances filed it will make your head spin" were the words of one of KPFK-FM's two SAG-AFTRA union stewards on Friday September 4th, a week after the LA entertainment union stated it was taking Pacifica Radio into arbitration alleging union-busting and contract violations.
The handling of staff reductions has been an unmitigated disaster, with laid off employees receiving notices days late with incorrect job titles on them, Pacifica not applying for promised workshare benefits until one day before all employees were shifted to half-time, and employer-provided cell phones shut off this week with no notification.
The SAG-AFTRA union says manager Radford's plan, as endorsed by local and national boards and faux-corporate counsel Dan Siegel, will work by attrition to force many, if not most, of the station's union staffers to eventually resign without severance packages- and having to contest unemployment benefits.
After several months on half-time pay, Radford's 2016 "reorganization plan" would require employees to take on other jobs to move back into work schedules paying more than $25,000-$30,000 annually.
No positions beyond 50% time are provided in Radford's document, so senior employees would have to bump their junior colleagues out of jobs to secure 80% or 100% work schedules at a living wage.
Pacifica last went to arbitration with a labor union in 2010-2011 after two people were laid off at KPFA with 5 NLRB complaints dismissed, one layoff upheld and the other reversed.
Pacifica's position is much shakier this time with local operating deficits half the size, maximal impact to KPFK employees with shrunken paychecks for months with no reduction in job duties, a questionable use of the EDD Worksharing program as layoffs are not being prevented but are occurring at the same time with potentially more to follow, and the targeting of an employee with 11 years of seniority as the sole full-time layoff ....
Pacifica spent in excess of $150,000 on the 5 grievances and two arbitration hearings using KQED law firm Folger-Levin in 2011, so it is likely the half-time work reductions will save little to no money in the end, although they may achieve the goal of forcing many employees to quit voluntarily, releasing Pacifica from severance pay obligations.
The union's position in arbitration can only have been strengthened by the incomprehensible series of errors, omissions and mis-statements provided by Radford and Pacifica's national office finance staff in the past two and a half weeks.
First, Radford confessed to staff that she terminated the business manager after discovering the temporary agency employee had been writing checks to herself and another unauthorized person for at least 8 months, completely undetected by former CFO Salvador.
Then the Pacifica national office issued three different income statements for KPFK within 13 days, with half-million dollar swings between the figures which were attributed to "double-booking" hundreds of thousands of dollars of income in nine of the past ten months.
You can download all three versions at the link provided above. [or if they dont work here, plse cut and paste ]
Finally, GM Radford after announcing the receipt and deposit of a $134,000 bequest from the Rosen estate ....
, backtracked on her written and verbal statements to KPFK's local station board and emailed Pacifica's ED, board chair, controller and "financial consultant, Raul Salvador" on September 3rd that "this was a huge and mistaken misreading on my part" and the bequest amount was only $20,000, not $134,000.
The email's recipient list is puzzling as Pacifica's financial staff, specifically the controller Efren Llarinas and financial consultant Salvador who was reported by Radford on August 17 to be replacing KPFK's business manager, should have had direct access to KPFK's financial records.
Even more puzzling, PNB treasurer Brian Edwards-Tiekert posted on Facebook two weeks prior to Radford's email that the Rosen check was for $20,000, not $134,000, only to lapse into silence when shown Radford's written report to KPFK's local board stating the amount was $134,000.
How Edwards-Tiekert was aware Radford's statement was untrue when Pacifica's controller, ED and financial consultant were not, and why he said nothing else for two weeks as Radford repeated her statement over and over again, has not been explained.
Requests by several board members and members for a xerox of the Rosen check and deposit records have not yet been satisfied.
Snip
In the larger financial picture, Llarinas, currently holding the position of interim controller, has stated to the national finance committee that he cannot verify the accuracy of the financial statements issued due to the failure to reconcile bank accounts. Llarinas suggested "centralizing" the finances.
This is a more intense suggestion than that made by fomer ED Summer Reese in February 2013 when she proposed relocating Pacifica's 21 bank accounts scattered among 6 different banks .....same bank to reduce the networks annual bank charges.
Reese's proposal was denounced by the Siegel/Brazon faction as a "power grab" and never voted on and the network has continued to run up in excess of $100,000 annually in bank admin charges and perform as many as 25 wire transfers a month between banking institutions to administer payroll, health benefits and network services payments.
snip
"The interview that was broadcast on KPFK compared homosexuality ... and suggested an "epidemic" of African-American homosexuality was caused by "conditioning" among a series of disturbing statements that sought to incite anger at and pity for black queer people.
snip
National Board members Cerene Roberts and Jose-Luis Fuentes burnt more than an hour of Pacifica's governance committee advocating for a re-arrangement of the meeting schedule to avoid an in-person meeting in Berkeley next year.
The motion may or may not be taken up by the full national board, but the earnest effort probably speaks to the board's desire to avoid being confronted by CA members, who are upset about the failure to conduct the election and the unionbusting at KPFK.
KPFA's Twit Wit Radio satire touched on some of Pacifica's weekly news in their September 6th episode where a familiar-sounding voice comments that "It is next to impossible to privatize a solvent radio network."
You can listen to the 30-minute episode here or at www.kpfa.org.
Pacifica in Exile readers may write to the board
atpnb@pacifica.org.
For readers who may wish to do more, any donor to a California-based not for profit organization like Pacifica may file a complaint to the open file at the Registry of Charitable Trusts at the Office of the CA Attorney General. Pacifica's case number is CT011303. The form and instructions for filing may be downloaded here....."
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( end of edited excerpts) ###
Notes:
KPFK's general Manager can be contact by phone, email, postal mail, in person and asked what is happening, how and why so much turmoil.
The Pacifica Nat'l Board and Local Station Bd can be contacted, questioned and any one can ask to also be Heard, not just to hear about their assumed importance, their control, their lack of repair abilities.
See KPFK.org for where and whom to contact and do not mince words.
Inaction, and lackadaisical attitudes will just allow this non-profit corporation to become like all the ones They love to criticize, hypocritically.
Also questions and opinions about the continual off-programming when asking for $$$$ , not feedback, not any organizational, professional help - and repetitious fake infomercials and links to websites of dubious validity also.
Ignoring it all and pretending that the listener-stakeholders-sustainers-subscribers-members have nothing to do with what is happening at KPFK is to pretend the control is all in those within the organization - all those who received unnamed and un-admitted benefits, while the outsiders only can maybe hear a bit of info = that can also now be located on internet, smart media, and many other sources.
KPFK no longer has any exclusive access to any events or media. Radio is not dead, but the claims for special status is.