AFTRA contract raises salaries 5% a year for three years
NPR-union pay dispute hits a nerveOriginally published in Current, Nov. 13, 2000
By Mike JanssenSalary, often a touchy subject for NPR's historically underpaid news team, became a major sticking point in recent negotiations between the network and its unionized program staff.
While the conflict highlighted NPR's hopes of raising wages to compete in the media marketplace, it also discouraged some staff members who thought the network showed little interest in sharing the wealth generated by its success in grantsmanship.
"I don't remember contract talks ever ending like this, with this kind of resentment," said Howard Berkes, a veteran correspondent. Like some 275 other NPR employees, he is a member of the Washington-Baltimore chapter of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA).
Though Berkes is satisfied with the final contract, "it's what we had to do to get it that has left a deep, deep cavern of resentment and bitterness in the bargaining unit," he said.
Four years ago, when AFTRA negotiated its previous contract, NPR faced a different financial picture. Pubcasters were still recovering from the Republican attack on their field, NPR's extensive Gulf War coverage had taxed its resources, and the network was starting to bear the costs of a new building. These circumstances made it difficult for NPR to grant big raises, and the staff was forgiving.
Circumstances were different this time around. NPR's revenues have grown steadily since 1996, with a recent wave of dot-com underwriting feeding the growth. Tax filings from fiscal years 1996 and 1999 show a 12 percent rise in total revenue in three years. Richard Harris, an NPR science correspondent and chair of the union members' negotiating committee, said the latest round of negotiations had a "different endpoint." "We were negotiating to a point—not what the company had to give us, but what the company felt like giving us," he said. "Under those circumstances, it's not surprising that some were disappointed the company didn't give us more."
Negotiations began shortly after Labor Day, and, when Current went to press last Friday, the contract was still being finalized.
AFTRA opened negotiations on a high note, proposing a 12 percent raise each year for three years.
"That was our starting position, that was set out more to make a statement than anything else—that, this time, finally, NPR's in a position to talk about a legitimate pay increase," said Ken Greene, assistant executive director of the AFTRA local.
Same raise for everyone?
Greene said NPR presented a more modest proposal including successive 4 percent, 3 percent and 3 percent raises. But the management proposal that met with the fiercest opposition would have awarded on-air staff with higher raises than off-air staff, Greene and other negotiators said.
NPR Executive Vice President Ken Stern declined to discuss details of the proposal, but said, "We did propose ... moving people towards market parity. That means some may or may not move in lock-step."
For example, "if that means a mail clerk is 15 percent under market, that mail clerk should not necessarily move in lock-step with others who are very much closer." Stern declined to say which NPR employees are farthest from market parity.
The union steadfastly refused to consider NPR's proposal, saying such a move violated the principles of collective bargaining, and argued for equal raises throughout the ranks. Some of the most vocal opponents of the measure were the very on-air personalities who would have received the highest raises.
"There has always been strong solidarity, from the lowest-paid production assistant to the highest-paid host," Berkes said.
"The company was extremely reluctant to give up this philosophy, and I think this led to a certain amount of acrimony in our negotiations," Harris said. "We were not talking the same language."
But NPR didn't back down until one evening in the final days of October, with the possibility of a strike looming, and with the national election and an NPR Board meeting in the near future. In the end, AFTRA prevailed. The union's final contract includes a 5 percent pay raise per year over three years, plus bonuses, and extends overtime pay to a group of producers and editors previously covered by a separate contract, who have been getting comp time instead.
Some of NPR's news team emerged from the process dissatisfied, as evidenced by the final 134-37 vote that ratified the contract. "It was too much of a battle," Greene said. "Some people said NPR clearly has the resources right now not to really say they can't do it."
"For veterans, it was essentially tantamount to broken promises," Berkes said. "We had been promised for years that we should share in the success of this company, and, in the benefits, we have. But there's been many times in the past when we've been told, 'We can't give you a pay increase this year or a better pay increase, because we just don't have the money, but we will someday.'"
Scott Simon, host of Weekend Edition Saturday, took a more pragmatic view of the debate. "We're part of the real world," he said. "Some of our younger people have only worked at NPR, and are expecting the company to take care of them. I love NPR, and I love the people I work with, but it's where we work. It's not our family, and it shouldn't be expected to be."
Raising salaries is not the only thing NPR must deal with, Stern said. "This strategic goal has to be reconciled with a variety of other strategic goals of the company. And those can't all be done at once and in the same place," he added, noting that the company is now investing extensively in program development and Internet and satellite ventures.
What do broadcasters earn? Barbara Walters (c) $10 million Bernard Shaw, CNN (c) $1.1 million Bob Edwards, host, Morning Edition (a) $206,366 Robert Siegel, host, ATC (a) $141,234 Producer, 60 Minutes (c) $100,000 Nina Totenberg (c) $80-85,000 TV News Anchor (avg.) (b) $66,800 Reporter, NPR (min.) (d) $64,000 Newscaster, NPR (min.) (d) $56,000 Assistant producer, NPR (min.) (d) $51,000 Off-air reporter, PBS NewsHour (c) $33-55,000 Radio News Anchor (avg.) (b) $34,100 TV News Reporter (avg.) (b) $31,000 (a)—NPR income tax filings, fiscal year 1999
(b)—RTNDA Radio/TV Salary Survey, 2000 (TV and radio stations)
(c)—Brill's Content survey, 1999
(d)—Minimum salaries defined by AFTRA contract, 2000No Bryant Gumbels here
Considering its nonprofit status and unique economics, it's no surprise that NPR pays journalists less than other major media do. According to NPR's 1999 tax filings, Bob Edwards received a little more than $200,000 in compensation, while most hosts of daily shows in commercial media make millions (see table at right).
The gap narrows among lower-rung staff, a disparity that may help explain why NPR management originally opposed the same raise for all. The latest AFTRA contract sets salary minimums that range from $39,000 for production assistants to $93,000 for senior correspondents.
Though the push for uneven pay hikes proved to be controversial, both NPR management and staff acknowledge that current salaries make it difficult to hire and keep top journalistic talent.
"The financial basis and the rationale for smaller salaries is decreasing," Simon said. "It's not fair. It's not right. I'm complaining less for my own sake than for others, … particularly when we're raising more of our money on the outside."
It's a fact of life, Berkes said, that NPR's journalists won't match their commercial counterparts in salary anytime soon. "But the frustration that you hear people express is that we do an equivalent job, so there's something wrong with that picture."
Stern confirms that NPR management wants to be more competitive in the media marketplace. "Money has been an issue in the past in terms of attracting top-quality people," he says, and cites the vacant National Desk editorship, which has been open for at least four months since the departure of Cindy Samuels.
The responsibilities of the National Desk job, which recently expanded to include the Washington Desk, make it a daunting challenge for any journalist. "It would be hard to find somebody with enough experience willing to take that job," Berkes said. For anyone coming into NPR, "it most certainly means a pay cut, so they kind of have to take a vow, not of poverty, but of lower pay. I think that is a problem," he said.
Stern says an important long-term goal is to move salaries closer to those paid at comparable outlets—not in "one giant step," he says, but in a series of appropriate hikes.
But what's a comparable outlet? There isn't one quite like NPR, which produces more national news programming than any other pubcaster and is fundamentally different from commercial competitors. Hosts and journalists at national radio and television networks regularly pull down seven-figure salaries—heights NPR is unlikely ever to reach.
"When the company says, 'We're going to bring you up to market,' they're clearly not defining the market as Bryant Gumbel," Harris said.
The more tenable comparison, NPR journalists and management say, is to major newspapers, which have supplied some of NPR's major talents and leaders. Talk of the Nation host Juan Williams came from the Washington Post, also the longtime employer of NPR President Kevin Klose. Bruce Drake, the newly appointed news veep, worked for years at the New York Daily News. In a salary survey last year, Brill's Content reported that few newspaper salaries exceeded $200,000—less than most high-powered TV jobs, but still in excess of almost all of NPR's posts.
In the past, many journalists have been willing to overlook that, and have foregone high salaries for what they see as NPR's unique benefits.
"I think we have to be very proud that, even when we have not been as competitive as we should have been, we've really attracted top-quality people," Stern said.
Journalists who leave NPR for other media outlets still wax nostalgic for their old workplace. "Listener loyalty is second to none," said Chitra Ragavan, a former justice correspondent for NPR who left in 1998 to become a senior writer at U.S. News and World Report. And "the exposure is phenomenal," she said. "All the policymakers listen to NPR. All the politicians listen. ... People would call me and say, 'You know, I really like how your story was structured the other day'—things you would not expect on commercial television, for example."
"People sometimes say to me, 'You can be making so much more doing what you do elsewhere,'" said Simon, who has worked in both public and commercial television. "No one does what we do elsewhere."
But those benefits aren't everything, as Ragavan noted. "NPR offers a venue for up-and-coming journalists to have an increasing listenership," she said. "But will they keep top talent forever? No. Because that's how the marketplace works."
. To Current's home page . Earlier news: Who-does-the-work issues were among the questions on the table for NPR's negotiations with the technicians' union, NABET, earlier in the year.
Web page posted Nov. 12, 2000
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