KPFA Programmer Bacon Missing The Boat?

i notice for two weeks now they started missing up the archiving again. It has been mainly posting the news at 6 pm under flash point .today was funny they archived the voices of the middle east under the morning show > lol 12 hours lapse. liars and cheaters this concern fraudulant people dont belong to kpfa.

since i live near the oregon border i listening kpfa online and i noticed something wierd for the last two weeks .For few hours several shows are archived under the name of a single show. For exemple saturday morning shows like behind the news and uprising were archived under saturday talkies. So we had saturday talkies at 9 am at 10 am an 11 am. Consequently to listen to uprising one have to click saturday talkies at 11 am. Same thing for the kpfa evening news which was posted like 4 times. the strangest is that after few hours or the following day everything is corrected. The web is a good way to judge the popularity of a show since you can have a real count of everyone who is listening i wonder if it is a way for phony management to altere the number of people who really listen to one show.

Any mistakes in the archives are due to problems with the archiving software, not due to any kind of intentional conspiracy whatsoever. It's really that simple.
I sit next to the guy that handles that stuff. It's all automated,but sometimes it screws up and has to be fixed manually. That's the extent of my technical knowledge. If you see a problem, please email web [at] kpfa.org or engineering [at] kpfa.org and it will get fixed as time allows.

I went to the KPFA website 2 days ago (Mon.) at 7pm at night, and it said "Now Playing: Flashpoints" which regularly airs at 5pm. I decided to click it and the radio station came on playing music. I don't know what they regularly have on nowadays at 7pm because I don't really listen to KPFA anymore except for Flashpoints, but I remember they use to have on Asian Expression Press and Africa Today at that time. Anyway, I don't really think the website mistake was intentional in this instance, but rather was just incompetence on the part of the concerned listeners management, and whoever does the station's website. Maybe I am wrong though.
As for Kevin Bacon, I don't really know about his current lack of coverage regarding the SEIU case because I don't listen, or depend on him for coverage of labor issues. Years ago, I used to listen to the Morning show, and when he would come on I remember thinking he was really boring.
After I stopped listening to the Morning show years ago, I would still listen to other stuff here and there. I didn't like the concerned listeners management but I still endorsed the station as a whole. However, after the attacks on Flashpoints, at the end of last year, I seriously lost all respect for the station. I still listen to Flashpoints and continue to respect Hardknock Radio, but I think in it's entirety KPFA really sucks now.

As Scoop Nisker used to say, "If you don't like the news, go out and make some of your own."

Rather than sit here at your computer demonizing David Bacon, David Bacon, DAVID BAAAACOOONNN!!!! -- do your own podcast and put it out there. See if anyone is interested in your story and how you present it. In other words, compete with KPFA instead of just flailing at it.

Pointing out that Bacon is ignoring the important issue of SEIU isn't whining. KPFA claims to be a public, people based radio station, keeping us informed about matters not covered in the mainstream media. The contention made by antiwhiner, in the previous comment, that we should stop complaining about KPFA, and actually do something, doesn't take into account that many in the community are pissed off precisely because they are doing stuff. Projects such as Berkelely Liberation Radio, Copwatch, Food Not Bombs, indybay etc. are testimony to that fact. The fight against the concerned listeners group--of whom Bacon happens to be one--is interested in making KPFA, in actuality, truly listener supported radio. One thing that really makes me angry about KPFA is their decision to scrap the Night Report segment from the nightly program Flashpoints, over the heads of those responsible for doing the show. I am not just complaining, others and I are doing things to change the trajectory of KPFA. And by the way "Fuck David Bacon!"

Things get stranger . Bacon's close ally Dan Siegel is the Chief Attorney defending NUHW against the SEIU International . Why ? One can only speculate . After all the one could easily think that he would have more in common with Andrew Stern and his dictatorship over SEIU . The CL has shown that they support a corporate style mgmt. at KPFA/Pacifca and are certainly no friends of Media Democracy . Judging from some (not all ) of their supporters among Union official dom they aren't exactly the strongest supporters of Union democracy either .
But no one said that Siegel is dumb. Maybe he thinks that Stern and his cronies are going down and so he wants to be on the winning side .
Despite whatever their attorney's intentions may be NUHW should be strongly supported .And i certainly don't knock NUHW for hiring him . But i hope he will be watched carefully .

AFTER RAGOUMAN POSTED ON JANUARY 03 THE ARCHIVING ERRORS STOPED IMMEDIATELY .THEN STARTED AGAIN NOW FOR 3 WEEKS. WHAT BOTHER ME IF IT WAS REALLY ERRORS WHY DO THEY ALWAYS BENEFIT THE SAME LAME SHOWS .USUALLY THE SHOW PREFERD BY THE CONCERN LISTENER. WONDER WHAT KIND OF SOFTWARE MALFUNCTUION IS THAT?

As I said in a previous comment KPFA's website was messed up on Mon. and said, at 7pm at night, "Now Playing: Flashpoints". Why would they purposely put that up there. I am not really sure it was intentional but again, I don't know. I think it is safe to say that we shouldn't just give the Concerned Listeners management the benefit of the doubt precisely because they lie so much. But I still can't figure out why they would go out of their way to put up Flashpoints as the current program playing at the time when it wasn't.

answer to konsider.today i wanted to listen friday flashpoins and i made the mistake to hit the second falsh point wich is the npr boring kpfa news . had to go back and hit the first kpfa .i bet many people do the same mistake .then lying management can say look news are very popular while i bet no one listen to them anymore.

"labor dude" Continues Censorship Of SEIU $25 million Suit Against NUHW leaders
KPFA labor programmer David Bacon continues he censor the story of the struggle by NUHW workers against the SEIU International. Maybe Andy Stern the SEIU corporate president has pulled Bacon's string. The international has spent $25 million to sue the leaders of the NUHW because of their efforts to form a new union. Like the corporate media, Bacon who gets money from the SEIU for photos and articles is refusing to cover this story in his weekly show. His latest March 31 show has not a word or interview about this Federal Court case across the bay in San Francisco. Bacon again covers event throughout the world but doesn't have time for this story that affects hundreds of thousands of workers in Northern California. The international trusteeship of hundreds of thousands of SEIU members in UHW apparently is of no concern to Baccon. So much for KPFA's "labor reporter".

Concerned Listeners supporter and the weekly morning show "labor reporter" at KPFA David Bacon was complicit in covering up the important witch hunt trial against the NUHW by the SEIU. Despite weeks of shows, the "labor" reporter could not mention one word about this important corporate labor trial financed by the $25 million in dues money from SEIU members here in California and around the country. Maybe Bacon should introduce his show every week by saying he is bought and paid for by Andy Stern and company.


"The NUHW 16: SEIU's Courtoom Payday Is Pyrrhic Victory for New Corporate Unionism"

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/early120410.html



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The NUHW 16: SEIU's Courtoom Payday Is Pyrrhic Victory for New Corporate Unionism
by Steve Early
Legal lynching, actual or attempted, has been a longtime threat to union organizing. When workers first tried to form unions, they found themselves charged with conspiracy. For nearly a century, employer attempts to crush their "illegal combinations" took the form of injunctions, fines, and imprisonment for civil court contempt or criminal law violations. When the trade unionists involved were progressives, additional tools of repression were employed, including statutes against "criminal syndicalism" (a widespread IWW offense), "sedition" (for which Gene Debs spent time in jail, after opposing World War I), and advocating a government overthrow (the basis for Smith Act indictments against Farrell Dobbs of the Teamsters and Bill Sentner of the UE). For many years in California, the government used federal immigration law, fruitlessly, in an effort to deport Harry Bridges of the ILWU back to his native Australia.

In my own experience as a trade unionist since 1972, I've seen West Virginia coal miners hauled into court, jailed and fined for wildcat striking. The UMW was a frequent target of huge damage suits filed by coal operators for breach of the "no-strike" clause in the union contract; when the Pittston strike, an officially sanctioned work-stoppage, ended in 1989, the UMW and its members faced more than $60 million in fines. In the last twenty years, "civil RICO" litigation has become another popular form of management payback for non-strike activity, such as union-orchestrated "corporate campaigns." The acronym refers to the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. In protracted labor disputes, it provides a basis for a legal counter-attack similar to that faced, with increasing frequency, by citizens whose pro-consumer or pro-environment stance results in a SLAPP -- a business-backed "strategic lawsuit against public participation" in regulatory proceedings or community protests.

The goal of all this harassing litigation is not only to discourage resistance by those with organizational treasuries, like the UMW or the UFCW, which was sued, under RICO, over its campaign for a fair union election among Smithfield Farms workers in North Carolina. Legal action is also a way of threatening and burdening individual activists who may not have big salaries or bank accounts. They nevertheless find themselves being pursued for millions of dollars in damages, not to mention having to spend a lot of their time dealing with depositions, document requests, and trial preparation, rather than engaging in ongoing organizing. Before the RICO case filed by Smithfield was settled in late 2008 and the union won a representation election shortly thereafter, the company had sought $16 million from the UFCW, from organizers like Gene Bruskin, who coordinated its corporate campaign, and even from low-budget allies like Massachusetts Jobs with Justice.

The latest resort to SLAPP-style intimidation in a key worker struggle was not by any government or corporate foe of militant unionism. Instead, America's second-largest labor organization, theService Employees International Union (SEIU), bankrolled the costly and disgraceful legal circus that has been running in a San Francisco courtroom for the past several weeks. As part of his increasingly desperate campaign to destroy the rival National Union of Healthcare Workers, SEIU President Andy Stern filed a lawsuit seeking $25 million in damages from 28 former elected leaders and staffers of United Healthcare Workers-West, who helped SEIU members oppose an unpopular headquarters takeover of their local fourteen months ago. When internal reform efforts and further resistance to Stern's trusteeship became futile, these longtime union activists formed NUHW, making them targets of personal retaliation by SEIU in the process. After spending what NUHW claims was $10 million on the litigation, SEIU ended up last Friday with a confused and soon-to-be-appealed jury verdict awarding damages amounting to less than $750,000 against the new union and only 16 of its founders. (In a post-verdict conference call for the press, SEIU representatives claimed to have won $1.5 million in damages. They would not disclose how much dues money was spent on the four big law firms that spent 13 months preparing and presenting the case.)

Readers interested in weighing the merits of "SEIU vs. Sal Rosselli et al" can compare the competing views of reality on display athttp://www.nuhw.org and http://www.seiu-uhw.org, check earlier courtroom reports posted by Carl Finamore and Randy Shaw at Beyond Chron, or the post-verdict commentaries by Mike Parker or David Moberg. I was not at the trial and don't claim to be an impartial observer, by any means, since I know many of the defendants personally (along with other NUHW organizers, which include my own daughter). I think those sued by SEIU include some of the most committed, self-sacrificing, and talented organizers in the labor movement today. And that's why I'm one of many NUHW supporters around the country who have helped organize fund-raisers for the new union or personally contributed to the Fund for Union Democracy (465 California Street, Suite 1600, San Francisco, CA. 94104) to help pay its legal expenses.

There are two important things that friends of labor less connected to the case (and the related cause) might want to know about Andy Stern's legal pursuit of the "NUHW 16":

* SEIU's lawsuit won't stop NUHW from winning more representation elections among California health care workers this year -- the main goal of the litigation.

U.S. Labor Department forms just filed by the NUHW, for 2009, confirm that it has been getting strong (and hopefully continuing) financial support from another angry organizational target of SEIU aggression. The widely-condemned attack on UNITE HERE -- engineered last year by Stern -- has led his former ally in Change to Win to return to the AFL-CIO fold and, along with others, provide several million dollars in grants and loans to NUHW. If pro-NUHW workers wrest bargaining rights away from SEIU at Kaiser Permanente this summer -- in a statewide bargaining unit of 45,000 -- the new union will be on the road to financial self-sufficiency and long-term viability. Already, it was won the right to represent 3,300 workers, including Kaiser units in southern California, where workers voted 10 to 1 to switch unions in January.

During the April 23-25 Labor Notes conference in Dearborn, Michigan, activists from around the country will have the chance to meet with NUHW leaders and rank-and-file organizers and discuss other ways they can be directly involved in upcoming campaigns. Already a number of experienced organizers, young and old, from other unions have committed to take vacation or personal leave time to assist NUHW efforts at Kaiser or anywhere else in California they are needed. (Among them are retired SEIU members or former staffers estranged from the union now.)

* If the liability finding made in court last Friday is upheld, union democracy and reform advocates everywhere have a new legal precedent to worry about.

The gist of SEIU's case was that the relationship between a national union and any of its local affiliates is just like the Bank of America's relationship with branch banks. If the parent company wants to reorganize a branch or change its management in any way, there's no legal basis for objecting. In the union context, local officers -- even though elected by the membership -- owe a greater "fiduciary duty" to the international union than to anyone else. They must comply with all headquarters decisions, even if dues-payers locally -- the workers they represent -- are opposed to them and these directives are clearly misguided.

SEIU has relied on this legal theory before -- for example, seven years ago in Rhode Island, when it tried to crush a small local rebellion that erupted under similar circumstances. In that dispute, the International union targeted Karen McAninch and Charles Wood, two SEIU Local 134 leaders who were accused of breaching their "fiduciary duty" to the International Union because they did the bidding of their members rather than follow the orders of Andy Stern.

In 2002-3, Rhode Island janitors, campus maintenance workers, and librarians represented by Local 134 were given an ultimatum by Stern. They were told they had to merge with a Boston-based building service workers local run by national union staffers he had appointed. When the vast majority of Local 134 dues-payers signed a petition seeking to keep their own local intact, their wishes were ignored, just as rank-and-file opposition to the forced restructuring of UHW was later brushed aside as well. So members themselves began organizing an independent union, the United Service and Allied Workers (USAW). McAninch, a former Brown University librarian, and Wood, a former maintenance worker, felt compelled to support the initiative taken by their co-workers, even though both were full-time officials of 134. Not only was the local put under trusteeship, with all the elected officers and stewards removed, but McAninch and Wood were sued for damages, which could have been personally ruinous for either if SEIU had been able to collect. As in California, the amounts claimed included dues lost by SEIU, pre-trusteeship salary money the defendants had been paid, and other costs. Like the NUHW 16, they were accused of "misappropriating trade secrets" -- in the form of information about Local 134 bargaining units and members they knew well and had served for years.

Fortunately, Karen and Charlie's legal defense was successful. Other trade unionists, locally and nationally, rallied around the defendants and helped raise money for legal expenses so the full cost of the litigation was not borne by workers trying at the same time to build a new union, like NUHW. By 2007, most members of Local 134 had voted to switch from SEIU to USAW, when their contracts neared expiration and "open periods" finally enabled them to file NLRB petitions to decertify Stern's union. In the meantime, USAW managed to organize 150 new members at the City of Providence Library. The Stern-appointed trustee of Local 134 did seize its treasury but ended up with only a handful of its original members, who are now part of Boston-based Local 615.

The fact that SEIU succeeded at the trial level in California, where it failed in Rhode Island, is not a good sign, legally. It means other SEIU dissidents, forced out of the union under similar circumstances in the future, may be taking personal financial risks like McAninch, Wood, and the NUHW 16 did. On the ground, however, both USAW then and NUHW now, on a much larger scale, demonstrate that there is an alternative to captive membership in a national union that thinks nothing of squandering millions on a defense of its own corporate-style structure, power, and perks.

Steve Early is a labor journalist and lawyer who worked for 27 years as a New England organizer for the Communications Workers of America. He is the author of Embedded With Organized Labor, from Monthly Review Press, and a forthcoming book entitled The Civil Wars In U.S. Labor, which deals with the dispute between NUHW and SEIU and other conflicts involving "progressive unions." He can be reached at .