Seven Not on Your Side … if you’re an employee! 

WJLA has the largest news team in the Washington area. As the flagship station of the Allbritton chain, WJLA provides national news headlines for other Allbritton-owned stations. 

While Uncle Joe & Co. are doing fine at the siphon-end of the business, not so for the employees.

According to Wiki, “On January 23, 2009, WJLA laid off 26 staff members, including several on-air reporters due to financial constraints. WJLA also announced a 4.9% salary cut for all remaining staff and a halt to company contributions to 401(k) retirement plans.”

The members of NABET-CWA voted for a 3.9% pay cut as well as the next years’ pay bump to help the company when it was thought to be in financial difficulty. The union got no guarantees of lay-off protection.

Now three years later when the DC economy is in better shape, the company tells union members across the table that it can’t afford to pay anything but a paltry 1.5% increase, with a third of that as a “merit” increase to be parceled out to “worthy” workers. Some NewsChannel 8 employees would still left behind even though they do the exact same work seen on all the outlets.

Is Allbritton still in financial difficulty? Didn’t it have money for new talent as well as new technical equipment?

“Our plan is to have two TV stations, broadcast and cable, and two websites,” VP News and Operations Bill Lord said.

NABET-CWA union members do most of the technical and newsgathering work for all these outlets. If they have money for new ventures like Politico, it would seem that our union members have an investment in the company! So why would it be so impossible to bring pay parity to the table? On top of that, using the economy as an excuse, they want to decimate the ranks by splitting seniority.

It needs to be said that our members are a key part of the Allbritton profit engine as well as investors in the enterprise. Where is our return on the investment; no pay and no job security? Our members deserve better.