Radio KDNA - The Troubles - Background to the Nightmare
This is an approximate chronology of what has happened at KDNA.
In 2008, as the construction of the new KDNA facility and Granger Community Center was approaching completion, Ricardo Garcia, after serving as the Executive Director of the Northwest Communities Education Center (NCEC) for 24 years, announced his intention to retire. Among other things his desire was to produce a regular radio program for senior listeners, write, travel, and continue to advocate for the disadvantaged as he has for over 35 years.
A new Executive Director
After a frustrating search, the Board of Directors ended up hiring one Maria Fernandez as the new Executive Director (ED). We have little information about her background, except that, according to the Heritage College website, she attended Heritage and Yakima City College. We have found no evidence that she has any background in radio or other media, or was ever a listener of KDNA. Her employment started at about the same time that staff moved into the new facility, in July 2008.
Problems were immediately apparent. While KDNA and NCEC had over 30 years experienced the same amount of turnover typical of any nonprofit social service agency that relies on employees motivated by a mission and not by money, for the most part the staff shared a common work ethic and goal. Working with the previous ED, they were used to an egalitarian workplace, where they felt respected for their contributions, and were committed to "getting the job done", whether it meant working more than 40 hours a week or volunteering on weekends. And, they always put the needs of their clients and listeners ahead of their own.
But with the new ED this all changed. The same staff that had worked, and sacrificed, for the success of the organization and the improvement of the lives of their clients became the subject of fits of intimidation and abuse. While talking publicly about her perceived need for increased accountability and a more formal management style, in practice she seemed to be more interested in setting up an industrial age work house where employees (esclavos) were subject to arbitrary and undocumented changes to rules, policies and standards, and where she could abuse someone out of one side of her mouth and then brazenly, out of the other side say "if I didn't write it down I didn't say it". The casualness with which she changes her story from one moment to the next is shocking.
The Board president speaks
A chasm has opened up between the community of listeners and clients and the ED and Board President of KDNA and NCEC (management). The President of the Board likes to remind the community that, not possessing the education that he has, they lack the comprehension to understand the sophisticated wisdom of his pronouncements. Oh, but they do understand that what the President has in education is unfortunately offset by a severe deficiency of common respect, something that was never lacking prior to July 2008. While NCEC staff thought that providing assistance to their farmworker clients was part of the mission of NCEC (see mission), the new ED does all she can to avoid contact or interaction with the clients by staying behind the closed door of her office or by "working from home."
And, besides the above, what else did the ED do during her probationary period of employment? She appears to have written a "work plan", although much of it is simply regurgitated from strategic planning documents that other staff had already prepared. Somehow she avoided being available to take phone calls from representatives of organizations with which NCEC had contracts to perform services. If they left a message, she did not return their call. She met frequently with the Board President Jorge Lobos, although there is no record of what business was conducted at those meetings.
After six months of not seeing her produce anything more than the work plan, and of continuous abuse and insult, the staff presented the Board with a letter of no confidence. The Board did not respond.
The strike
After the first of the year the staff, feeling isolated, powerless, and not having any mechanism for resolving their grievances, chose to unionize. When asked later why, after 30 years, did you choose to unionize now, the answer has been "We had no reason to before Maria and Jorge". This was a difficult step for the staff, and not without risks.
In April 2009, the Executive Director terminated two of the staff. The staff and Union believe the terminations were retaliation for their union organizing activities, and demanded their reinstatement. Management refused to point blank. On May 16th the staff went on strike, and simultaneously presented management with the offer to return to work if management agreed to binding arbitration regarding the status of the two terminated employees. The offer was delivered to the ED, who never forwarded it to the Board as a whole.
In the meantime, one Board Member, Matt Adams, resigned from the Board expressing his dissatisfaction with the performance of the ED and of the Board in failing to hold her accountable for fund raising and financial reporting. He points out that when the ED was interviewed for the position, she asserted she was skilled in fund raising. This may have been an exaggeration, as she has raised nothing in the last year, but since she didn't write it down….. In addition he revealed that the ED had withheld from the board that the staff had made an offer for arbitration. It was only after his resignation letter became public that the Board was compelled to accept the offer, with result that staff returned to work on June15th.
As tensions have escalated, management's threats have become more strident. During the strike the Board President announced in no uncertain terms that if the staff persisted in exercising their right to strike, they (the Board) "would be forced to give the station to someone else". He was not specific as to whom that someone would be. Interestingly, because of his close relationship with the ED, he was probably the one Board member that knew of the staff's offer of an arbitrated settlement, and so he is as much as she responsible for delaying their return to work.
On the evening of May 28th, about 50 people gathered in front of the board President's home in a silent vigil, desperately hoping that their silent protest would persuade him to restore normal programming. When the media called KDNA management, their calls were not returned.
The effect on programming and listeners
Telephone call-in shows have always been an important and popular part of KDNA's programming format. The utilization of this mix of live interactive listener participation was not an accident, but is a critical factor helping to empower the listeners and give identity to the community, as well as inform listeners about the variety of issues that are important to their daily lives. The participants in these programs, largely farmworkers or members of farmworker families, formerly lacking the confidence to speak up, ask questions, or assert their opinions, became outspoken, sophisticated critics that were comfortable in the broadcast medium. This is what 'la voz del campesino" was all about, and the staff worked to make it that way. The new ED put an end to that.
The new ED's holding the farmworker community at a distance and the Board President "disrespecting" them contributed to a growing alienation that listeners have felt from "their station". This was to come to a head during the strike, but was first apparent a week before when representatives of the community managed to attend what must have been the last public NCEC Board meeting. The community attempted to speak out about the terrible abuse that staff had been suffering, and about programming changes that they were worried might be forthcoming. Out of control, and seething in anger, the Board President adjourned the meeting and walked out, ordering the rest of the Board to follow, to the jeers of the crowd. The next day, during a news program, KDNA's news director, practicing transparency, was attempting to discuss the meeting on the air, and took a call from former ED Ricardo Garcia. Shortly after Garcia began to describe how the meeting had deteriorated as emotions had flared, the new ED stormed into the studio, and hung up on Garcia, after which the news director, too, was cut off. This was a hint of the censorship to come.
When the strike started, the community's sympathy was with the staff that they had come to know and respect, partly because the respect was reciprocated, but also because they could "hear" the changes being implemented in programming. The community had been continuing to call the station and voice their support of the staff off air, the test would be what happened on air. Well, the call-in shows ceased. There being no way to silence the outcry of the listeners, the ED chose to discontinue the programming that had built their confidence. In mid-strike, the ED and President decided to do a "forum", and ventured forth with a new version of call-in. They assembled a list of "priority callers", that supposedly supported management's practices and proposals, and instituted what they thought would be a means of discouraging the community from calling. Adopting an odious minority stereotype, they assumed that (1) the disadvantaged farmworkers that supported the staff were undocumented, and (2) that they would be cowed into silence if in order to be on the air they had to provide their name, their address, and their telephone number. They were wrong on two counts. Their "priority callers" failed to materialize, and the listeners were not about to be intimidated into silence. The Board's only choice was to pull the plug, and all call-in programming ceased.
One amusing note during the management's on-air forum, was hearing a caller ask why during normal business hours the phone was not being answered. During the period of the strike, management had announced they would use volunteers to replace the permanent staff. Nevertheless, they hired a team of "temporary employees", ostensibly to carry on business. But now the ED replied to the caller that "the phones can't be answered because the staff is out on strike."
So what are the ED's planned programming changes? Well, we don't know, because one day she will say they need to drop programming for mature adults and seniors, and instead start "focusing" on youth. And then the next day she denies having said anything about changing programming (she didn't write it down, did she?). We do know, and although she has not written it down, that she thinks past and current programming does not meet her standards, and that she cannot possibly raise any money to support the kind of programming KDNA has been doing for thirty years. It also sounds like she is blaming the programming for her inability to perform, especially after the previous ED raised 3.2 million dollars to build the new facility based on the services that NCEC and KDNA have provided. Remember, she has absolutely no experience with radio.
The strike ends, but the nightmare continues
As we said, staff returned to work June 16th, and a whole new set of draconian dictates were issued. In addition to closing the airwaves to public participation, she's locked the doors too. In another attempt to intimidate and humiliate the public, management now requires anyone entering the Granger Community Center (the KDNA facility, funded in large part by the State and a Community Development Block Grant) must now sign in, and sign out. Certain people have been barred from the building entirely. Board meetings are now held in secret at undisclosed locations, and sometimes certain Board members are not invited. A Community Advisory Board meeting "spontaneously happened Wednesday June 24th, but it wasn't announced until the news director found out by accident and managed to get one announcement on the air before he was silenced. That was enough though, and twenty five people showed up, giving the ED an earful about how unhappy they are with the chaos she has introduced.
To be continued
