WBUR Employees Deliver Union Recognition Petition to Management

BOSTON – The following is a statement from the WBUR organizing committee:

The content-creating staff at WBUR is proud to announce we have chosen to come together as a union. More than 80 percent of the staff signed a union recognition petition that was delivered to WBUR management today. We hope management at WBUR and Boston University will choose to voluntarily recognize our union, to avoid a delay in the important next step of negotiating a contract.

“The journalists and content providers who have chosen to work at WBUR are among the best, most creative, thoughtful and imaginative people in this field anywhere, and the work they produce reflects that, every day,” said Bob Oakes, host of WBUR’s Morning Edition for more than 25 years. “They deserve to be treated in a manner befitting the professionalism they bring to that dedication. Affiliating with SAG-AFTRA will prove immeasurably helpful in helping the staff work with management to ensure that work life at WBUR is fair and equitable for all. I am very excited about this movement and this opportunity.”

The organized staff hopes to work with management to find ways to make WBUR an even better place to work. Among our priorities: transparency and equity in compensation, a more diverse and inclusive workplace and protections for freelancers and temporary workers. And as we told management in our petition: “most importantly, as WBUR grows and changes, we hope to foster a culture in which workers feel safe, trusted and appreciated, where their ideas are recognized and their concerns are respected.”

“We are passionately committed to the long term mission and success of WBUR,” says Anthony Brooks, WBUR senior political reporter, who has worked at WBUR and NPR since 1982. “Forming a union is the best way to ensure that our voices and talents can become part of the conversation with management as we strive to make WBUR the best public radio station in the country.”

WBUR staff is working with SAG-AFTRA to unionize. Those who signed the petition represent all areas of the station, including those working in the news department, on the digital team, on Here and Now, Radio Boston, On Point, Only a Game, on podcasts and in our production departments.

“The staff is excited about the union and the possibilities it brings to work together with management,” WBUR digital producer Ally Jarmanning says. “We view this as a tool to make sure we have a meaningful voice in our working conditions, and hope management views this as a positive and collaborative step.”

WBUR follows in the steps of other public radio stations that have unionized in recent years with SAG-AFTRA, including KPCC in Pasadena, California, Minnesota Public Radio, and WBEZ in Chicago. Those newsrooms’ positive experiences led staff at WBUR to explore the possibility of organizing in Boston.

About SAG-AFTRA

SAG-AFTRA represents approximately 160,000 actors, announcers, broadcast journalists, dancers, DJs, news writers, news editors, program hosts, puppeteers, recording artists, singers, stunt performers, voiceover artists and other entertainment and media professionals. SAG-AFTRA members are the faces and voices that entertain and inform America and the world. A proud affiliate of the AFL-CIO, SAG-AFTRA has national offices in Los Angeles and New York and local offices nationwide representing members working together to secure the strongest protections for entertainment and media artists into the 21st century and beyond. Visit SAG-AFTRA online at SAGAFTRA.org.