County Issue / The Playboy Channel...

Annie Muno, Probationary firefighter, Ventura Fire Department, Station 3

I don’t have any problem with it and, if I did have a problem with it, I would just walk out of the room. This is a big firehouse, and there are a lot of places we can go and a lot of things we can do in our free time. I can go read a book or a magazine, or I can ask to have the channel changed if it’s something on that bothers me. It would be different if someone took a picture of a naked woman and taped it to my locker or shoved it in my face. That would be offensive. But we have choices here. I’m not being forced to sit down in front of the Playboy Channel. I have other places I can go. And besides, we’re professionals here and we’ve never had to deal with something like that. We have to work together here, and I think everybody has enough respect for each other that if they were watching something offensive to me and I told them, they would just change the channel.

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George Lund, Ventura County fire chief

I say no. I think that my position is clear by the action we have already taken. We have the union filing a grievance saying this ban is unfair, but I feel very strongly that it’s inappropriate and shouldn’t be permitted. Regardless of whether they have freedom of speech, I see this as an issue of the workplace, and I feel that we have to be able to control what goes on there. Let’s remember, it’s still a place where work is done. It’s still a place that’s shared with both sexes--we have women and men working there. And it’s a place where there are often juveniles present; we have a cadet program where young people are frequent visitors to the station house. Whether they are responding to an emergency or on a work cycle or just on their free time, that doesn’t change the fact that they are in a workplace and we should have the right to control the activities that occur within it.

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Ken Maffei, President, Ventura County Professional Firefighters Assn.

My answer to that is that our issue is not with the Playboy Channel or with Playboy magazine. Our issue is with the idea of censorship and the First Amendment. What if the county said they don’t want you to read the Bible in the fire station? We’re talking about the Constitution of the United States here. When it’s an issue of censorship of any kind, we feel that the government should be opposed to it and that’s why we’re opposed to their banning anything. Certainly we respect the sensitivity of some people. If this stuff is offensive to even one person at the station, by all means it should not be watched. We do recognize that this is a place of business and, of course, the firefighters’ first priority is their work. But this is a unique place of business because the firefighters also have to spend their free time and leisure time there. The question is, then, should they be censored from watching something they want to watch while they are not working? While it is a public building, there are places in it that are private, and they should be able to use those spaces however they wish.

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Vicky Howard, Ventura County supervisor

I personally think that allowing the Playboy Channel in the workplace is, without question, totally and completely inappropriate. This is a public building, a county building. So I don’t see the difference whether it’s the day room of the fire station or in my office. It’s simply not right to have that kind of thing on television in any county office. We have to be able to draw the line somewhere and, if we are going to draw the line, I don’t think there’s any question that the Playboy Channel would fall on the wrong side of the line. The thing about it is, I think we are dealing with a very professional Fire Department here. That’s why they recognized this as a problem and dealt with it. I think if you went out and asked them, the vast majority of the firefighters would agree that it would be totally inappropriate for employees of the county to be watching that kind of television in a county facility.

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Charlene Pizzadili, Past coordinator, Simi Valley/Conejo chapter of the National Organization for Women

I don’t know of any other job where something like that would be allowed. And this isn’t just any job. The taxpayers are paying for the firefighters to be working. The whole argument that they are just on standby or that they are on their free time just doesn’t hold water. No matter what they’re doing, when they are on the clock, they are supposed to be professionals. What makes this whole thing disturbing to me is that I have to wonder, what kind of people are these that would fight for the Playboy Channel when they know it could make their co-workers uncomfortable? Why in the world can’t they leave something like this for the privacy of their home? If I was working under that captain, I would be asking myself, is this somewhere where I can be treated equally as a woman? Do I want to be working for somebody who is insensitive to the idea that this is offensive? I don’t see any difference between this and some firefighter arguing he wants to show racist films to black firefighters and expecting them to sit there and allow it to happen. Sexism is just as serious as racism.