NPR Workers Take The Mike

(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)

Workers at National Public Radio (NPR) who usually work behind the microphones spoke out Friday at an NPR Board open mike session. “Change is everywhere at NPR these days,” said Flawn Williams, a long time NPR audio engineer and formerly technical director of All Things Considered. “The halls are alive with the sound of podcasts.” Williams, who is on the NABET-CWA Local 31 negotiating team, told the Board that NPR managers “have a track record of choosing some of the poorest of the available digital tools, mandating their use in the workplace, resisting pleas for reevaluation, and treating with disrespect, intimidation and outright discipline those employees who point out that the emperor has no clothes.” And, Williams warned, the ability of NPR’s workers to continue to produce quality radio is threatened by managers who “have spent a lot of your money on outside legal wranglers to tear down any vestige of a cooperative working relationship with our union.” Read more at http://www.nabet31.org