Tell FOX: Give Broadcast Workers a Fair Contract!
Thanks to Jeff Wiggins for sending us this.
Sisters, Brothers, Kin –
The Broadcast Workers who bring local FOX news coverage to the New York and Washington DC metro areas continue to fight to end their decade-long wage freeze and negotiate a fair agreement.
So far, the give and take required for productive negotiations has been disproportionate, and management has refused to move off their demands to create a more disposable workforce. In this, FOX Television Stations, Inc. is turning its back on 75 years of stable labor conditions and a productive labor-management relationship.
FOX’s latest proposal included provisions that would:
-- Deprive the Union of its lawful right to bargain over terms and conditions of employment by offloading subjects of collective bargaining onto Company Handbooks and policies which can change at any time.
-- Allow the Company to replace union broadcast workers by permitting non-union workers to operate, repair, and/or maintain broadcast and technical equipment.
-- Allow the Company to rely on overly permissive Force Majeure language basically letting the Company off the hook with respect to its contractual obligations whenever there is an event impacting station operations, not just in times of true crisis (e.g., COVID-19 pandemic).
-- Reduce vacation time while at the same time scheduling excessive overtime at the Company’s discretion.
-- Divide workers into narrower new seniority lists to make it easier to lay off long-term employees.
When the last contract between the Unions and FOX was negotiated during the financial crisis in 2008, workers understood the need to make temporary sacrifices with an expectation those sacrifices would be honored in future negotiations.
Fourteen years later, current FOX management refuses to even acknowledge those past sacrifices, while these same workers endured numerous hardships working on the front lines during the COVID-19 pandemic, racial-justice protests, the 2020 elections, and the January 6th insurrection on Capitol Hill.
In solidarity,
Team IATSE