Sustainable Budget for KPFA

These appalling low wages for everyone, including management, makes an all volunteer labor force at non-profit KPFA practically mandatory, unless no volunteers are available for a given position. KPFA is a charity, community radio and if they cannot pay at least $50,000 a year for each union employee and $80,000 a year for the general manager, plus full medical and pension benefits, then it may as well be volunteer. The so-called union that allows such low wages is by definition a company union.

the managers should not get more than other salaried employees. It behooves KPFA, and Pacifica, to if they're cutting the budget, to lower the salaries he highest paid people first, the management. They should do this before laying anybody off.

The figures published on " kpfaworker.org " exposes its own false claim to represent all kpfa workers to include Unpaid Staff. In Reality, the Union workers made the fatal decision to cease representation for the Unpaid Staff, who comprise of 80 percent of the actual workers and contribute to more than 65% of the programming produced at the station, at no cost to KPFA or the Foundation.

Although most of these workers are themselves experienced professionals and experts in their fields, including professional media experience, the very fact that they are not requiring compensation to help serve the Pacifica Mission, has somehow resulted only in disregard and even disrespect from most paid workers and managers.

Prior to the CWA being brought in, there was a time that Unpaid Staff at KPFA were also members of the previous Unions. No perks or pensions were expected, and workers were assured certain protections, dignity, and respect. This did not change not because of the NLRB ruling, which did still allow for some provisions of inclusion; but purely by choice of certain paid union members who decided to exclude KPFA's unpaid staff.

If the Union Members at KPFA would re-consider its policy and practice of completely excluding unpaid staff from representation in the workplace, it would be more likely that the Unpaid Staff might be quicker to stand with their paid brothers and sisters.

But that the paid workers have and continue to alienate all who don't share in their self-serving agenda, is failing to win sympathy.

- An Unpaid Worker (who does not endorse 'kpfaworker.org')

KPFA Worker is trying a little too hard. KPFA's wages are not rocket science. They are laid out in a union contract at 20.20/hour plus seniority benefits, and a generous benefits package that includes full individual and dependent health coverage with no co-pay ($700 a person per month - even for halftime employees plus another $500 a month for kids and partners), generous time off-provisions, and child care stipends.

The low wages featured on the preposterous website exclude the generous benefits package and loop in very part-time employees working half-time, quarter-time and less. The full-time package is worth 42K entry-level plus 10-20K in benefits and goes up from there.

The way that CWA and KPFA has been handling the 200K or so in layoffs they have executed in the face of their million dollar loss is to trim a bunch of people from full-time to half-time, thus depressing wages to keep 30FTE on the payroll.

They are doing it to themselves by refusing to cut down to a sustainable staffing level where the people that do work there have enough hours to support themselves and their families.

The "sustainable budget" features pressuring people to push health care benefits on to their partner's employers and reduce their hours even more by using the Calworks project to collect 50% of it back again from the state. This simply impoverishes KPFA workers even MORE with another 25% cut.

The "sustainable budget" should be called the "make everybody else pay for my job" budget. Shift the benefit obligations to partners, shift the payroll to the state, shaft Democracy Now for 2 more years by not paying 2010 fees until 2013.

Everything but the only thing that is sustainable. A smaller workforce.

We should be hearing more about this "Sustainable Budget" as people study it more.

But my understanding so far is that the "Sustainable Budget" is unsustainable, since it projects using resources not yet committed, which could be disastrous, as KPFA is out of money and borrowed to meet payroll, etc.

Someone more knowledgeable, please comment about this!

(Sooner or later, someone will write about it.)