Fresno TV Employees Approve Contract

Employees at Fresno’s top-rated television station, who stoked months of labor negotiations with rallies and a hunger strike, approved a new contract Friday night.

The new contract raises some salaries 20% to 40% for union members at Channel 21 in Fresno, where many strikers were earning a fraction of what their colleagues at other stations earn. All of the union members won back pay from Dec. 1, 1999, according to Carrie Biggs-Adams, negotiator for the National Assn. of Broadcast Employees and Technicians, which represents the group.

“A lot of people are going to get back paychecks with commas in them,” she said. “Real money.”

KFTV is the Fresno affiliate of Univision, the country’s largest Spanish-language television network. It is also the top-rated station in the area, beating out English-language competitors.

Anchorman Fermin Chavez, 37, was earning $35,000, and on-air reporter Reina Cardenas was earning $25,300.

Under the new contract, Chavez will earn $37,000. Cardenas will receive $28,750 as well as “internal Univision training to improve her value to the company as a journalist,” Biggs-Adams said. And Martin Castellano, the station’s master control room operator, who was making $21,481, will now get $26,500 and get a paid lunch hour, “like real people,” Biggs-Adams said.

Cardenas, Castellano and Biggs-Adams maintained a liquids-only hunger strike until the votes were counted Friday at 7 p.m. It had lasted 43 days. Initially, seven union members and Biggs-Adams began the modified hunger strike in mid-February, but in recent weeks some dropped out for health reasons. Last week, a wan-looking Cardenas was suffering from low blood pressure and gastritis as a result of the fast. She continued to work at the station but was forbidden by management to report on either the rallies or her hunger strike.

“This is the first labor dispute I’ve been involved in where there was a fast,” said federal mediator Rudy Medina, who joined the talks in January and who has 18 years of experience in collective bargaining. Medina is scheduled to hold a series of workshops at the station between union members and management to improve communication.

Most of the union members are former farm workers and children of farm workers in the Central Valley, Latinos whose salaries are the only source of year-round income for large families. The hunger strike was considered a throwback to the days of the late Cesar Chavez, who founded the United Farm Workers of America in 1962. Coincidentally, Friday would have been his 73rd birthday, and his son, Paul Chavez, attended a rally outside the station.

The UFW has shown its support for newsroom employees such as Cardenas, a former farm worker, by showing up at rallies and signing viewer boycott cards.

Univision executives have a policy of not commenting to the press, and management at KFTV was not available Friday night.

Friday’s contract, ratified by a vote of 13-3, also ensures that Univision will not pursue punishments against any union members or station employees who supported them. And Univision has withdrawn the complaint it filed in Superior Court earlier this week accusing union members of harassing management.