News

CNN Found Guilty of “Widespread Misconduct” Against Workers

In New York and Washington; Judge Orders Company to Bargain with Union



In a historic decision the US National Labour Relations Board in November found the world famous Cable News Network (CNN) guilty of violating the rights of workers in two of the operations to such an extreme degree that it has ordered the reinstatement of over 110 of them with substantial payment in damages and immediate recognition of NABET-CWA as their union with the right to bargain for them.



CNN, despite its reputation, in comparison to other commercial TV channels in the US as relatively “progressive”, has long been very anti-union. It regularly has much lower working conditions than virtually any other comparative broadcasting operation in America (where most network employees are unionised and covered by important collective agreements). One of the reasons CNN originally set up its main operations in Atlanta, Georgia, was due to the weaker legal protections of workers and unions there.



In order to avoid having to deal directly with unions in CNN’s New York and Washington offices the company at first subcontracted all its technical services to Team Video Services (TVS). Predictably, given the better labour protections in these places, the subcontracted workers in both New York and Washington early became union members (they voted overwhelmingly to join what is now UNI-MEI affiliate NABET-CWA) and were able to negotiate a labour agreement.



However some three years ago CNN managed to get rid of most of its unionised members and escape the contract by dropping TVS and setting up something called the Bureau Staffing Project which hired the workers directly under worse conditions and without recognition of the union.



The labour court (NLRB) has now determined that the “staffing project” was a sham to avoid the union and the contract conditions. It ordered the immediate reinstatement of over 110 workers, recognition of the NABET in New York and Washington, substantial financial payments to the workers discriminated against, and other groundbreaking measures such as the required posting of the decisions against management at the two bureaux involved and a “cease and desist order” against CNN from infringing on workers’ legal rights in the future.



The Atlanta operations remain non-union but it is to be hoped that these clear victories for the workers elsewhere will give heart to the Georgia-based workers. In the early 1980’s when CNN’s Atlanta headquarters were first opened the vast majority of workers signed cards to join NABET. The union subsequently lost a vote to become their bargaining agent in a controversial campaign in which CNN’s Ted Turner spent over a million dollars in anti-union efforts, publicly suggested he would close down CNN rather than recognise the union, and took other actions which NABET considered illegal. Union supporters are heartened by the possibility that this long deferred union victory may be a foretaste of new possibilities for the enjoyment of workers rights at CNN, in broadcasting as a whole and among many other sectors of American workers in the post-Bush era. Indeed, if the workers’ rights bill which is now before Congress had been in effect at the time of the Atlanta union recognition election years ago the company would have already been fully union.