On the Beat
Friday, June 27, 2008
Wendy McCaw, owner of the Santa Barbara News-Press, has sent a mass mailing to fellow newspaper owners, telling how she is valiantly fighting against an evil union that is trying to wrest away her right to control --- some say pervert --- the news.
The publisher of a major metropolitan newspaper passed on her letter, which includes:
“In the summer of 2006, the Teamsters union promised Santa Barbara News-Press reporters that if they joined the union they would be able to write what they wanted, when they wanted, without interference from management. In our case, this was an enticing promise since I had been actively attempting to stem biased reporting in our news coverage.”
On the Beat
In reality, after the top editors and I quit and the meltdown began in July, 2006, the reporters sought out the union in an attempt to organize to gain some measure of protection against what they saw as McCaw’s outrageous interference with honest and fair news-gathering.
Ira Gottlieb, Teamster attorney said: “In response to Wendy McCaw's lies and exaggerations, the Union's campaign has never stated that it wants, or thought it could achieve, a regime at the Santa Barbara News-Press where reporters write "what they want when they want" or otherwise control the content of the SBNP. I defy her or her army of representatives who have been fatuously spewing this falsehood to come up with any such statement by the Union. It simply doesn't exist.”
"Re: Unions Attempting to Take Away Your First Amendment Right to Control the Content of Your Paper
"Dear :
"As owner and publisher of a small town newspaper (the Santa Barbara News-Press, circulation 35,000), I wish someone had alerted me to the tactics employed by unions as they attempt to organize newsrooms.
"One of the tactics employed is to promise your employees that they will enjoy some measure of controlling the content of your paper as long as they join the union. The union promises that content control is a “term and condition of employment” and, therefore, is subject to bargaining. The union never bothers to tell the unsuspecting employees that this promise is empty or that the First Amendment guarantees that the owners/publishers are solely vested with the right to control content. I’d like to share with you what happened at the Santa Barbara News-Press so you can avoid a similar situation at your newspaper.
"Background:
"In the summer of 2006, the Teamsters union promised Santa Barbara News-Press reporters that if they joined the union they would be able to write what they wanted, when they wanted, without interference from management. In our case, this was an enticing promise since I had been actively attempting to stem biased reporting in our news coverage.
"Throughout 2006 and 2007, the union demanded publicly that I relinquish my right to control what is printed in the Santa Barbara News-Press as part of union negotiations. The union used a series of pressure tactics including, a passing out of flyers at local city events decrying the “ethics” of the Santa Barbara News-Press; hanging disparaging signs on overpasses in Santa Barbara; calling and sending letters to advertisers telling them to stop advertising; picketing with signs containing vicious personal attacks on management, urging subscribers on television and radio to cancel their subscriptions—all this in an attempt to force management to agree to their demands.
"Despite the financial toll it took on the paper and the emotional toll on the employees, I knew I could never relinquish my right to control the content of the paper.
"After spending millions of dollars defending these rights against union attack, a federal judge finally decided the issue. On May 21, 2008, United States District Court Judge Stephen Wilson found publishers do have a First Amendment right to control the content of their publications and that “… The union was organized, in part, to affect (the publisher’s) editorial discretion and undertook continual action to do so.” In other words, unions have no right to dictate the contents of a newspaper and potential union members cannot use editorial content control as a bargaining chip in union negotiations.
"The Santa Barbara News-Press’s situation is a cautionary tale for owners/publishers. We must never give up our First Amendment rights to speak and to publish. They are our rights as owners and publishers, not to be tossed aside in favor of others who would seek to control the content of our newspapers.
"I hope that you find this helpful and I hope that you are able to use the Santa Barbara News-press’s experience to assist you in monitoring and protecting your paper and, from assault. If I can assist you or provide you with additional information, please do not hesitate to contact me at 805.564.5165
"Very truly yours,
"Wendy McCaw"
"In response to Wendy McCaw's lies and exaggerations, the Union's campaign has never stated that it wants, or thought it could achieve, a regime at the Santa Barbara News-Press where reporters write "what they want when they want" or otherwise control the content of the SBNP. I defy her or her army of representatives who have been fatuously spewing this falsehood to come up with any such statement by the Union. It simply doesn't exist.
Furthermore, Judge Kocol specifically rejected the SBNP's arguments that typical union organizing slogans like 'Take Back the News-Press' and 'Don't let McCaw Control the News' literally meant entrepreneurial or editorial takeover (page 25 of the decision). The eight victims of Mrs. McCaw's unfair labor practices still await a ruling from the full National Labor Relations Board in Washington, D.C., which we believe should include an order to reinstate them, as recommended by Judge Kocol.
"The Union's campaign has been about fair treatment for employees at the News-Press, ever since Mrs. McCaw dramatically demonstrated that she was ready and willing to treat her employees arbitrarily in her role as co-publisher. As Mrs. McCaw knows or should know, the Union did not 'promise' the SBNP employees any particular result from its organizing campaign, let alone the absurd and not desired outcome of takeover of entrepreneurial or editorial control. What the Union promised was an increased voice in the workplace which is squarely in keeping with federal labor law and the United States Constitution (which protects the First Amendment rights of publishers and employees, too, and also protects the associational rights of employees), and an opportunity to discuss terms and conditions of employment in collective bargaining. Federal labor law requires the SBNP to sit down and bargain with the Union. Until the Union came in, Mrs. McCaw did not have to do that, and could, in reality, do whatever she wanted whenever she wanted to her employees: fire them, slash their wages and benefits, change their terms and conditions of employment, mistreat them and forbid them from criticizing her. Much of that legal landscape necessarily changed once the Union won the secret ballot election conducted by the NLRB in September, 2006.
"During the organizing campaign, the Union told the news department employees that if it won the right to represent the newsroom, it would negotiate for improvements in their terms and conditions of employment, including curbs of and protections against arbitrary (e.g.,post hoc) and false allegations of bias (and other unwarranted allegations) leading to unjust discipline, and for enhanced protection of individual integrity, which is a term and condition of employment, contrary to the News-Press' apparent position. That is what the Union has attempted to do at the bargaining table. For her part since the Union won the right to bargain, Mrs. McCaw and her representatives have continued to behave as if the Union's certification never happened, which has compelled the Union to file several unfair labor practice charges complaining of changes and depredations that the News-Press is no longer privileged to unilaterally impose.
The SBNP has labeled the Union's legal response to its continued lawlessness 'sport.' but the charges the News-Press has filed have invariably been dismissed without a hearing, whereas the persistent NLRA violations committed by the SBNP have been prosecuted, while many more remain under investigation. Mrs. McCaw has also failed to bargain in good faith, as the law requires. None of that is impacted by Judge Wilson's decision.
"In sum, Mrs. McCaw and her spokespeople have tried to construct the false straw man of a Union trying to take over the paper, to impress legal decisionmakers and members of the community with overblown inaccurate rhetoric. The reality, however, is that labor law compels the management of a newspaper, just as it does with management of any other private employer, to deal with the duly elected representative of its employees. That doesn't mean that the elected Union is 'taking over' the paper, though it evidently feels that way to Mrs. McCaw, who seems to view any questioning of her absolute authority to be a threat to be annihilated, 'disloyalty' to be eradicated, rather than a potential change to be embraced and constructively addressed, as the Union has been proposing for the last 24 months. Unions are a fact of life in this country (and for that matter, in most of the western world); they are entitled to certain legal protections and authority, and that necessarily includes having a voice in the operation of businesses like the SBNP, regardless of how management feels about it.
The SBNP seems to consider any such incursion on what it expansively views as management prerogative to be a violation of the constitution, but that is not the law. There is a big difference between employees having the temerity to demand changes in their terms and conditions of employment as long understood by the National Labor Relations Board, and 'taking over control of content' of the paper, which has never been the objective of the Union or the employees. Mrs. McCaw either fails, or refuses, to grasp this clear distinction.
"I need not tell you that news reporting is of necessity a collaborative process, involving the reporter, the editor(s) and others, all of whom have some influence on what is written and published. That is part of what is meant when we declare the truism that 'Wendy owns the paper but not the news.' She claims to want to report the facts, which means someone other than herself has to gather them, give meaning to them through a story, and make sure the story is fair. Editors play key roles in that endeavor, as collaborators and 'realilty checkers,' not as disciplinarians and retaliators. All of those tasks are ordinarily achieved without the direct involvement of Mrs. McCaw, who has stated several times since she bought the paper that she was going to keep her personal opinions away from influencing the reporting of the news.
"Notwithstanding McCaw's alarmist approach in her letter, even her representatives at the bargaining table 'rigid, hostile and disrespectful of the process, law, employees and Union as they are' recognize the unremarkable fact that story ideas and angles, as well as the actual reporting, of course, often originate with the reporters. That is another real sense in which reporters unavoidably, by virtue of their job duties, have some influence over the content of the newspaper, which at least at most newspapers (including this one in the past), is welcomed by management that believes that the more the diversity of ideas are permitted to flourish, the better the quality of the paper is likely to be. Mrs. McCaw herself has voiced such sentiments in her paper.
"As for the legal points Mrs. McCaw mentions, the Supreme Court established almost 70 years ago, in a decision cited by Judge Wilson, that the First Amendment does not shield newspaper management from having to comply with federal labor law, let alone allow the newspaper to use it as a sword to punish employees who advocate unionism. Judge Kocol found the stated reasons for the SBNP's firing of Melinda Burns and Anna Davison to be pretextual (a kind way of saying that Judge Kocol found that Mr. Scott Steepleton was not telling the truth, either on the witness stand under oath, or in his written recitations of the alleged reasons for their discharges), and found the firings of the six bannering employees (Dawn Hobbs, Rob Kuznia, Tom Schultz, John Zant, Barney McManigal, and Melissa Evans) to have been in retaliation for their engaging in activity protected under federal labor law. Judge Wilson was not convinced by the SBNP that the mere reinstatement of the eight discriminatees would in any way infringe upon the paper's First Amendment rights.
"Without getting into the details of and precedents involved in the litigation which we hope will continue to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (contrary to Mrs. McCaw's statement, this decision is not "final" unless and until there is no further request for review) Judge Wilson seemed to conclude that the Union, in pursuing time-honored protection for news department employees from management overreaching ( protection which exists at many unionized newspapers and other employers, and which has long been standard in virtually every unionized workplace) somehow threatened her First Amendment rights. The Union is not seeking to place any such 'burden' on the SBNP, as Judge Kocol, who heard the SBNP's bluster for 17 days, correctly concluded.
"What the SBNP really seeks is immunity from unionization merely because of its status as a newspaper, or perhaps the privilege to fire or threaten any employee who dares to question its unilateral authority over the workplace. That radical and un-American result should not stand, and the Union will continue to pursue maximum protection for the employees it represents, within the confines of applicable law, in collective bargaining, and in legal fora where appropriate.
"As is Mrs. McCaw's habit, she seeks to shift the blame for her own extravagant expenditures on legal fees, and for the emotional toll on employees, on the Union (and in other contexts, she blames other of her perceived adversaries). In fact, she has no one but herself to condemn for what has occurred in the last two years. From the beginning of the organizing campaign, the Union has offered publicly to sit down, either directly or through intermediaries, to discuss resolution of the issues that separate the parties, and has been repeatedly met with bellicosity and hostility of unparallelled and indeed, irrational depth and breadth. Since November at the bargaining table the SBNP rejects a problem-solving approach, preferring instead bad faith, delays and stalling which it hopes will yield a one-sided outcome in its favor. Mrs. McCaw has repeatedly demonstrated her disdain and contempt for the rights and interests of her employees, so her faux expression of concern in her letter are hollow -- nay, flatulent and hypocritical.
"I doubt too many enlightened newspaper employers will want to follow Mrs. McCaw's example of how to run their operations, or how to respond to a union organizing campaign. Talented, accomplished journalists and other key staffers fleeing for the exits, community calls for boycotts, unlawful firings, threats, surveillance and interrogations, and spurious threats of litigation against neighboring businesses and journalists and filmmakers who publicly exercise their own freedom of expression are neither necessary nor helpful in protecting management's legitimate rights, let alone in attempting to improve the quality and economic condition of a newspaper."
Barney Brantingham can be reached at barney@independent.com or (805) 965-5205. He writes online columns and a print column on Thursdays.