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COMMENTARY: Legal Update -- News-Press Faces New Round of Charges |
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By Santa Barbara Newsroom
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Tuesday, April 10 2007 |
The main focus of SantaBarbaraNewsroom.com is for us -- the eight reporters who were illegally fired from the Santa Barbara News-Press -- to provide you with a daily online source for credible local news in our community while we await reinstatement to our jobs.
However, another goal is to use this Web site as a means to keep you apprised of our unionization effort and of ensuing developments in the legal arena, which we are confident will, indeed, lead to us getting back the jobs we love.
In a critical development Monday, agents for the National Labor Relations Board announced they are going to prosecute the Santa Barbara News-Press and its owner and co-publisher, Wendy McCaw, on two more charges -- both of which concern the company's illegal surveillance of us.
These new charges add to a long list of unfair labor practice charges the company must already face.
In the first, the News-Press will be prosecuted for the incident during which News-Press attorney David Millstein intruded on a union meeting at the Santa Barbara Public Library in February -- startling us and frightening our guests.
Not only was Millstein uninvited -- and asked numerous times to leave -- but he was rude and demeaning as he interrupted our meeting with advertisers who were there to discuss how they could help us remedy the News-Press crisis.
Secondly, the News-Press will be prosecuted for engaging in additional illegal surveillance by sending a private investigator to video tape us at union rallies in De la Guerra Plaza and for photographing us while we displayed banners downtown encouraging passersby to cancel their News-Press subscriptions.
Both of these illegal actions cut against the core of our rights under the National Labor Relations Act, which protects employees' rights to mutually support each other and advocate for a union, providing safeguards against employer intimidation, coercion and surveillance. This act is the foundation upon which better working environments are born in this country.
It is absurd that we have been illegally spied on while we engage in these federally protected activities. Equally troubling is the fact that these intrusions have chilled the enthusiasm of our colleagues still employed by the News-Press, effectively dissuading them from attending any of our events.
We are glad to see that the law is stepping in -- because the law has clearly been broken.
The NLRB's decision to prosecute the News-Press on these new charges follows a judge's ruling last month that we won our September election to join the Teamster's fair and square -- negating the company's allegations that we were coerced into doing so.
The federal agents also recently decided to prosecute the company on numerous other labor law violations. These include charges concern the following:
• Illegally firing eight reporters -- six of whom were fired for hanging a banner on the Anapamu Street footbridge in early February that stated "Cancel Your Newspaper Today" and for holding signs that read "Protect Free Speech" and "Stop Illegal Firings" in protest to the prior illegal termination of two of our colleagues;
• Coercively interrogating us about our union activities;
• Prohibiting us from wearing "McCaw Obey the Law" buttons and from displaying "McCaw Obey the Law" and "Banish the Bias" signs in windshields of our vehicles parked in the News-Press lot;
• Punishing some of us with low performance evaluations and no annual compensation in what was clear retaliation for our union organizing efforts.
We will let you know when a date has been set for an administrative law judge to hear these charges against the News-Press.
Sometime very soon, McCaw inevitably will be ordered to obey the law.
In the meantime, keep reading SantaBarbaraNewsroom.com for your local news -- and look for our commentaries for the latest in our struggle to get reinstated to the jobs we love so that we can reach a fair contract which restores integrity to the News-Press newsroom. |
