After 20 months at the bargaining table, the content creators at New Hampshire Public Radio overwhelmingly ratified their first collective bargaining agreement on Oct. 3. NHPR is an NPR member station based in Concord, New Hampshire, and the Granite State’s only statewide radio news service. The station has its own local newsroom and several original podcasts with national audiences. NHPR also has Spanish-language news for local audiences and live music programs. The 28-person unit of on-air and off-air employees, which represents engineers, hosts, reporters, producers and content creators, organized on June 29, 2021, and became the first public radio station in New Hampshire to do so.
The unit announced on X at the time, “We are so excited to announce: We’re forming a union with @sagaftra!” Station management voluntarily recognized the union in the summer of 2021 and negotiations on a collective bargaining agreement began in early 2022. After the successful vote by the NHPR unit to ratify their contract, it went on to be fully ratified by a vote of both the local and national SAG-AFTRA boards.
The three-year contract includes guaranteed annual pay raises, increased salary floors for full- and part-time staff, expanded parental leave, severance and additional personal days. The new agreement includes an innovative process to ensure content creators receive a fair share of potential revenue generated from new derivative uses of their work.
“I’m proud of our collective, proud of the work we do, and proud of our unified commitment to ourselves and future colleagues,” said Bargaining Committee member Christina Phillips. “This first contract was focused on lifting the salaries of our lowest-paid members and ensuring a seat at the table, but it also helped improve transparency, accountability and conditions stationwide. I’m excited for the future of NHPR, and honored to have been a part of this process.”
NHPR represents the second public media station to ratify a union contract in New England after Boston-based WBUR in 2020. In recent years, numerous other public media stations have unionized with SAG-AFTRA.
This item was originally featured in the SAG-AFTRA fall/winter 2023 magazine issue.