WBZ-AM’s new owner tells employees to re-apply for jobs
By Danny McDonald Globe Staff November 04, 2017
The company acquiring local radio news titan WBZ-AM has indicated employees at the station will have to re-apply for their positions, and that it does not plan to honor two union contracts.
In a letter sent Thursday to a union official, an attorney for iHeartMedia said that the company “will interview and consider for employment the on-air announcers and off-air production staff currently employed by CBS at WBZ-AM.”
The letter goes on to say that iHeartMedia “will not be assuming the two collective bargaining agreements between CBS Radio” and the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, SAG-AFTRA.
Tom Higgins, a Boston-based national director for SAG-AFTRA, said he hoped the letter represented a “misstep.” A handful of iHeartMedia managers who visited the station Thursday said they wanted the station’s transition to new ownership to be seamless.
“And a couple of hours later, I get that letter,” he said in a phone interview Friday night. “This sure doesn’t sound like seamless.”
Higgins said he forwarded the letter to WBZ staff on Friday. The station’s employees, he said, were in “total disbelief.”
Representatives from iHeartMedia did not immediately respond to messages Friday night.
Higgins said his union plans to meet with iHeartMedia brass early next week.
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