Radio National staff 24 hour strike

Radio National staff are now back at work after a 24 hour strike which began at 9 am yesterday (December 10).

Meetings of Radio National staff voted on strike action, after a deadline for negotiations with Managing Director Russell Balding yielded no response (see earlier story).

In Melbourne the meeting was attended by 30 people, and in Sydney more than 80 attended.

The meeting, organised by the CPSU, unanimously passed a motion to strike for 24 hours. Radio National played music while regular programs were off air. Staff will meet again on Friday if they receive no response to their demands.

One source told radioinfo that staff believe “names of people to be sacked have already been decided.”

The issue of whether or not the cuts are budget driven has been clouded by two conflicting pieces of correspondence. On November 25 in a letter to the CPSU’s Graeme Thomson Program Manager Gordon Taylor wrote:

“Radio National currently has a significant budget shortfall… “,

but in a letter this week (December 10) to Thompson from the ABC’s Managing Director, Russell Balding said:

“I am assured that the Radio National budget has not been overspent, and that there is not a financial crisis in Radio National.”

The union and staff are puzzled as to which version of the budget analysis to believe, but hope that the former accountant who is now the managing director can at least read a balance sheet.

A government critic of the strike action, who did not wish to be named, told radioinfo: “This just proves what Richard Alston was saying – the lunatics are running the asylum. Management should be able to manage without having to put up with this sort of tactic whenever staff don’t get their own way.”

While many Radio National staff told radioinfo they fully supported their ‘Features’ colleagues, ABC Radio staff from other networks were not all in solidarity with their comrades.

One ABC staffer said: “That program gets $750,000 each year to do one hour a week, compared with Triple J which runs a whole network for only five times that ($3.5 million). Think what Triple J or Local Radio could do with that money – they would be far more productive.”

At the meeting on Wednesday, the first motion was to call the strike. It read:

“Given the failure of ABC managers to respond to our reasonable requests, this meeting of ABC RN members of the CPSU resolves to cease work for 24 hours until 8.55 am tomorrow Thursday December 11.”

The motion was passed and then the meeting also passed 5 more motions:

This meeting

1: calls on RN management to explain immediately why, contrary to previous public announcements, the network now finds itself overspent in its budget by between $250,000 – $300,000

2: calls on Radio management to suspend immediately any processes under way towards targeted redundancies and calls on RN staff to boycott participation in proposed reverse-merit targeted redundancies procedure

3: calls on RN management to supply a proper business base for the
redundancies. If, and only if, such a case can be demonstrated, this meeting calls for management to accept expressions of interest for voluntary redundancies across the network, with the caveat that we accept management has the right to reject such EOIs in individual cases

4: condemns the failure of Radio Management to articulate a clear vision for RN

5: condemns what has been a continuing trend towards the dismantling of Radio national as a specialist network, through closure of specialist units, the creation by stealth of program-making pools, and undermining of the roles of specialist editors, frontline managers and proper reporting lines.

The meetings also resolved to meet again at noon this Friday if no response was received by then.