Union Blasts KTTV Contract Buyout Offer

KTTV Channel 11’s offer to buy out the contracts of its entire newsroom staff of writers, directors and producers is an attempt to institute an “unrestrained revolving-door policy” in which station management can hire, fire and demote union employees according to its latest whim, a union official representing the 11 affected employees charged Thursday.

The Fox-owned station offered what it called “an enhanced severance package” to its senior news staffers Wednesday and said it will replace any employees who choose to take the offer with new personnel.

Dick Smith, president of Local 53 of the National Assn. of Broadcast Employees & Technicians, called KTTV’s “unprecedented” offer “a means of getting what the station could not get in contract negotiations.”

KTTV management was not immediately available for comment but the station issued a statement that said the buyout offer is part of an “evaluation period” at “Fox News,” in which “certain employees will be given an opportunity to consider their future with KTTV. . . . (The enhanced severance package) is a personal decision for each employee to whom it is offered. It is not appropriate to comment further.”

But Smith countered: “To ask your entire news department to leave within three weeks is unheard of and a little more than just an ongoing re-evaluation.

“We feel that Fox is about to make significant changes in its news department and wants to be free of its current shackles. It’s the dream of every new news director to bring in his own people, but union contracts often preclude that and protect people who have worked there for years. Without these protections, the station can turn the news room into chaos and play with their employees as they choose.”

Smith pointed out that KTTV, which still trailed rival independent KTLA Channel 5 by a wide margin in news in the May ratings sweeps, had recently hired a new managing editor, Wendy MacNeill, and a new executive producer, Larry Perret.

NABET’s 1988 contract with the station protected the seniority rights of all union employees hired before June 1, 1988, meaning writers, producers and directors cannot have their pay cut even if they are reassigned to less prestigious jobs.

All employees hired after June 1, 1988, are union employees, but they do not have any of this protection, Smith said.

KTTV has proposed giving the five writers, three producers and three directors who are protected by the contract 26 weeks of pay at their regular rate plus four weeks for every year of service at the station. The news staffers must decide whether to accept the offer within three weeks and leave the station by the end of June, KTTV said.

None of the 11 employees is being forced to accept the offer, but Smith said that if they refuse, the company will probably reassign them to menial tasks within the newsroom such as ripping wire copy or sweeping floors--although with no loss in pay. Smith said that one director at the station had been reduced to ripping wire copy for the past year.

“There’s no question in my mind that they would be placed in the most subservient, humiliating tasks and they (KTTV management) will then hire whoever they want,” Smith said.

He said that none of the 11 has decided what to do about the offer yet.

Assignment editors, news assistants and on-air personnel were not affected by the buyout offer.