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Hunger Strike Enters Sixth Week; Univision’s Cisneros Won’t Help
At the Univision station in Fresno, Calif., a hunger strike continues. Employees have rejected two contract offers. Sympathetic news sources are refusing to talk. Businesses are pulling ads. Viewers are boycotting. The national media, from The New York Times to CNBC, have picked up the story.
Station Manager Maria Gutierrez doesn’t understand the fuss. It’s just a “garden-variety labor dispute” she told the Times.
Her comment was one more indignity for the station’s 18 union-represented employees, members of NABET-CWA Local 51. They have been struggling for a first contract since last July, fighting for living wages, job security and meal breaks.
“This is the top-rated station in Fresno, in the Spanish and English-speaking markets,” chief negotiator Carrie Biggs-Adams said. “Univision can well afford to do right by their workers, but they’d rather pay corporate lawyers hundreds of dollars an hour to try to break our will.”
Univision President and celebrated Hispanic leader Henry Cisneros has refused to come to the bargaining table. Until mid-March — four weeks into the hunger strike — he ignored the workers altogether, snubbing them at an event he attended in Fresno and refusing to respond to a letter seeking his help.
On March 14, he wrote to KFTV reporter Reina Cardenas and master control technician Martin Castellano, who, with Biggs-Adams, remain on the hunger strike. They are eating no solid food, consuming only water and vegetable and fruit juices. Eight employees began the fast Feb. 18, but doctors ordered five of them to stop in March because of health concerns.
Cisneros, formerly the U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, told the remaining hunger strikers he was worried about their health and asked them to eat. Yet he made clear that “I will not join you at the table.”
“Even though it is not appropriate or productive for me to get involved in the negotiations, please be assured that I am keeping informed on the process and am providing input to the KFTV negotiating team,” he wrote.
Cisneros sent a copy of the letter to CWA President Morton Bahr, but that was his only response to a personal letter Bahr wrote him in early March. Bahr pledged to help, telling him, “Your personal attention to the matter could avoid an unnecessary, tragic outcome to this story.”
Univision and NABET-CWA have successfully negotiated contracts in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago, NABET President John Clark said. “We can’t begin to understand why they’ve decided to play hardball in Fresno,” he said. “They’re abusing workers who have built a top-quality, top-rated station out of a desire to serve the Hispanic community. They’ve dedicated themselves to Univision in spite of lower salaries, and this is the thanks they get.”
Thirty days into the hunger strike, workers unanimously rejected a contract offer that would have increased salaries by a sizeable percentage. A week later, March 25, they rejected a new offer 13-1. Biggs-Adams said negotiations had improved Univision’s offer, including a $1,000 signing bonus. But concerns about job security remained and the money on the table was still far below the rest of the Fresno TV market.
Cardenas was offered $28,750, about a 14 percent annual increase. Castellano, who has been at the station for 10 years, was offered a raise to $26,520, about $5,000 more than he is paid now. Ten-year anchor Fermin Chavez, who is the station’s top-paid employee yet earns about $70,000 less than other area anchors, was offered a $3,500 raise. Presently, he makes $32,500.
“Some of the percentages look good,” said Biggs-Adams, a member of NABET-CWA 53 in Los Angeles who is helping Local 51 because of her fluency in Spanish. “But the dollar amounts are disgraceful.”
She, Cardenas and Castellano responded to Cisneros’ brief letter with two pages of details explaining why things are going poorly at the negotiating table. Noting that Cisneros cashed in $7.5 million in stock options in January, they said some of KFTV’s employees would qualify for food stamps.
“The union bargaining team has made concession after concession in an effort to achieve a negotiated settlement,” they wrote. “We stand ready to creatively approach the situation, but we need your assistance . . . to reach the fair, equitable and ratifiable agreement that is our goal.”
Station Manager Maria Gutierrez doesn’t understand the fuss. It’s just a “garden-variety labor dispute” she told the Times.
Her comment was one more indignity for the station’s 18 union-represented employees, members of NABET-CWA Local 51. They have been struggling for a first contract since last July, fighting for living wages, job security and meal breaks.
“This is the top-rated station in Fresno, in the Spanish and English-speaking markets,” chief negotiator Carrie Biggs-Adams said. “Univision can well afford to do right by their workers, but they’d rather pay corporate lawyers hundreds of dollars an hour to try to break our will.”
Univision President and celebrated Hispanic leader Henry Cisneros has refused to come to the bargaining table. Until mid-March — four weeks into the hunger strike — he ignored the workers altogether, snubbing them at an event he attended in Fresno and refusing to respond to a letter seeking his help.
On March 14, he wrote to KFTV reporter Reina Cardenas and master control technician Martin Castellano, who, with Biggs-Adams, remain on the hunger strike. They are eating no solid food, consuming only water and vegetable and fruit juices. Eight employees began the fast Feb. 18, but doctors ordered five of them to stop in March because of health concerns.
Cisneros, formerly the U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, told the remaining hunger strikers he was worried about their health and asked them to eat. Yet he made clear that “I will not join you at the table.”
“Even though it is not appropriate or productive for me to get involved in the negotiations, please be assured that I am keeping informed on the process and am providing input to the KFTV negotiating team,” he wrote.
Cisneros sent a copy of the letter to CWA President Morton Bahr, but that was his only response to a personal letter Bahr wrote him in early March. Bahr pledged to help, telling him, “Your personal attention to the matter could avoid an unnecessary, tragic outcome to this story.”
Univision and NABET-CWA have successfully negotiated contracts in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago, NABET President John Clark said. “We can’t begin to understand why they’ve decided to play hardball in Fresno,” he said. “They’re abusing workers who have built a top-quality, top-rated station out of a desire to serve the Hispanic community. They’ve dedicated themselves to Univision in spite of lower salaries, and this is the thanks they get.”
Thirty days into the hunger strike, workers unanimously rejected a contract offer that would have increased salaries by a sizeable percentage. A week later, March 25, they rejected a new offer 13-1. Biggs-Adams said negotiations had improved Univision’s offer, including a $1,000 signing bonus. But concerns about job security remained and the money on the table was still far below the rest of the Fresno TV market.
Cardenas was offered $28,750, about a 14 percent annual increase. Castellano, who has been at the station for 10 years, was offered a raise to $26,520, about $5,000 more than he is paid now. Ten-year anchor Fermin Chavez, who is the station’s top-paid employee yet earns about $70,000 less than other area anchors, was offered a $3,500 raise. Presently, he makes $32,500.
“Some of the percentages look good,” said Biggs-Adams, a member of NABET-CWA 53 in Los Angeles who is helping Local 51 because of her fluency in Spanish. “But the dollar amounts are disgraceful.”
She, Cardenas and Castellano responded to Cisneros’ brief letter with two pages of details explaining why things are going poorly at the negotiating table. Noting that Cisneros cashed in $7.5 million in stock options in January, they said some of KFTV’s employees would qualify for food stamps.
“The union bargaining team has made concession after concession in an effort to achieve a negotiated settlement,” they wrote. “We stand ready to creatively approach the situation, but we need your assistance . . . to reach the fair, equitable and ratifiable agreement that is our goal.”