TV News Staff Using Hunger as Weapon in Contract Fight

The television anchorman is dizzy, weak and getting thinner. The young reporter goes out on assignment, after not having eaten solid food since mid-February.

A group of broadcast journalists at KFTV Channel 21 is in the third week of a hunger strike in a contract dispute with their employer, the Fresno affiliate of Univision, the country’s largest Spanish-language television network.

The journalists say they simply want a fair wage. But their tactics are certainly unusual--negotiating a newsroom contract in the same way they have seen Latino farm workers do it in the Central Valley over the past few decades. Many of them have relatives among the farm workers.

To accomplish their goals, the group of eight chose a negotiating tactic that is unheard of for U.S. television newscasters, but a tradition in the Latin American countries that were home to their parents and grandparents.

The protesters have continued to work, but say they have not eaten solid food since Feb. 17.

The pressure on the station and the network, both of which have declined to comment, has been low key. Until now.

Last week, network chief executive Henry Cisneros spoke at a huge business luncheon in Fresno. A table of newsroom employees including the anchorman from KFTV--the No. 1-rated local station--stood in silence, wearing green T-shirts that read “Unionvision.”

This morning members of the United Farm Workers of America and Fresno community leaders plan to join the strikers at a demonstration outside Cisneros’ gated community in Bel-Air.

Officially, the UFW is not taking a formal stance on the dispute, although President Arturo Rodriguez added his name to a list of people who would boycott the station if negotiations drag on.

But many members of the UFW, which was a lone ally for immigrant laborers in the Central Valley years ago, have come out to support fellow laborers’ children, like Reina Cardenas and Martin Castellano.

Cardenas, 27, is the primary wage earner for her parents, two sisters, two brothers and a nephew, with whom she lives in a 3-bedroom house in a rural town 15 miles south of Fresno.

As a reporter at KFTV, Cardenas earns $25,300; on Monday management offered to raise her salary to $26,500.

Differences in Pay Offers

Her colleague, Castellano, has worked as a technician at KFTV since 1989. The 35-year-old husband and father of three girls earns $21,481 year, and on Monday management offered him $23,000.

“It’s clearly not a priority for them,” said union negotiator Carrie Biggs-Adams, who has also refused to eat solid food until a contract is hammered out. Biggs-Adams said jobs equivalent to Castellano’s at the NBC and ABC affiliates in Fresno pay about $30,000. But historically, English-language stations are able to charge higher advertising rates than Spanish-language TV, and reinvest more money stations and staff.

Fermin Chavez, who anchors the station’s afternoon and 11 p.m newscasts, is paid $35,000. He is the highest-paid of the protesters at KFTV and the lowest-paid anchorman in the area, even though KFTV ratings lead the market in both English and Spanish.

“I do everything,” he said, including segments on entertainment and features on the community. “And I do sports and the weather. Now, I feel weak. I had one nosebleed. But I have 10 minutes before I go on the air, so you’ll have to ask your questions quickly.”

Cisneros refuses to comment on the dispute, and a Univision spokeswoman would not discuss the matter. KFTV’s management has released only one written statement, which said it intended to negotiate in good faith. The community has heard about the dispute through limited local newspaper reports and by word of mouth. But individuals who call the station to get more information are directed to the general manager’s office, which only reads the written statement.

Fermin and Cardenas have been instructed not to mention the dispute on the air.

So far, there have been 26 bargaining sessions. Biggs-Adams said a series of talks at the Piccadilly Inn in Fresno last weekend and early this week did not make any headway on the salary differences. “But in those four days of bargaining, we should have been able to move on a votable contract,” she said.

Univision, which started as a single station in San Antonio in 1961, has grown into the dominant Spanish-language broadcaster in the country, attracting the overwhelming majority of all Spanish-language viewers. Its 1999 fourth-quarter revenue increased 29% from the same period in 1998, to $205.3 million, and its net income for the final 1999 quarter was $31.1 million.

Nationally, Univision owns 19 stations, including KFTV, in addition to having 30 broadcast affiliates and a presence on more than 900 cable systems. While union membership by broadcast journalists is typical across the country, only a few stations Univision owns, including Los Angeles’ KMEX-TV Channel 34, have union contracts. KFTV began negotiating with its newly elected union last August.

The network does not have a history of labor disputes. Still, salaries for its local station employees generally lag behind those of their English-language counterparts, and when the Fresno contract negotiations entered their sixth month, Cardenas and her colleagues began discussing possible action.

In addition to salary demands, the members of Local 51 of the National Assn. of Broadcast Employees and Technicians are protesting the use of nonunion freelancers, management and supervisors to perform union members’ work.

UFW Leader Finds His Loyalties Torn

The KFTV dispute presents a particularly uncomfortable problem for UFW President Rodriguez, a close friend of Cisneros and the son-in-law of UFW founder Cesar E. Chavez. He is torn between a television network that has been supportive of, if not overtly sympathetic to, his organization’s cause, and workers who needed backing by a labor group.

“The UFW has come out to defend every kind of union, like communication workers, air traffic controllers and seafarers. What makes it different in this case is that we have friends on both sides,” said UFW spokesman Marc Grossman. “We have long-time friends among the workers and we have friends at Univision.”

Last year, Cardenas was honored as a successful graduate of the migrant program, a system that supplements the educations of migrant workers’ children. The ceremony was held in an expensive Los Angeles hotel, and Cardenas was praised by Rodriguez and Cisneros.

Cardenas stood on stage and had her photo taken between the two men in what she called a “very, very happy moment.”

But these days, she is embarrassed to say that she and her colleagues are being grossly underpaid.

“We had to put aside our pride and show how much we didn’t have, even to other reporters,” Cardenas said. “Even going outside and picketing, it wasn’t a typical thing for a reporter to do.”