Re: Entercom imposes contract on AFTRA

[Dave Faneuf <tklaundry@juno.com>]

On Thu, 23 Jan 2003 17:07:30 -0500 "tony schinella" <radiotony@attbi.com>
writes:
> Thanks for sending this. Personally, I have always been a supporter 
> of
> organized labor - I come from a union family. But I never joined 
> AFTRA
> because of the huge pre-employment buy-in, which most unemployed 
> radio
> people don't have. Typical Catch 22.
> However, looking at the end of the story, in the contract, union 
> announcers
> at WRKO, essentially six minutes of talking, researching and some on 
> the
> spot news, are making between $43,000 to $50,000 annually. That 
> seems like a
> pretty good clip for this type of job.
Tony

Dave writes:
Three quick issues,  first when someone joins AFTRA and has to pay the
initiation fee (which is too high IMHO) I have seen the union allow newly
employed announcers pay in installments, they don't like it but it's been
done.  If you are unemployed and not working for a union shop or doing
union VO's why would you want to join AFTRA?

Secondly, I don't know if you remember a study done by an affordable
housing group in Boston and I don't recall the name of the group (a nexus
lexus search might turn it up) but it essentially discovered that to live
in Boston and rent a 2 or 3 bedroom apartment you need to earn over 20
dollars an hour (800 a week)

Third,  If you really think someone doing news only works 6 minutes and
hour you are sadly mistaken.
df