Fox O&O Wants to Cut Workers Pay
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While a number of stations are handing out bonuses to their employees, WNYW Fox 5 in New York wants some of their staff to take a pay cut.
The NY Daily News says that some behind-the-scenes staffers on the highly rated “Good Day New York” are being asked to take a pay cut of up to $7,000 to settle a long-running contract dispute between the TV station and their union, the Writers Guild of America East.
The union represents roughly 50 employees at the Midtown TV station. The official titles are news writers and news assistants — but the workers fulfill a variety of tasks, including producing segments for shows and working as associate and assigning producers, the union said.
Historically, WNYW Fox 5 has paid employees extra hourly fees when they take on the additional jobs.
Writers for the 4 a.m.-to-10 a.m. “Good Day New York” show earn an extra $3.25 an hour when they also act as segment producers — which requires them to book talent, write scripts, prepare graphics, set up blocking and more.
The Writers Guild said it has been in a six-year battle with Fox 5 to finalize a new contract for its 50 members.
The last one ran out in 2012 — meaning no senior staffers have had a raise since then.
Initially, Fox 5 wanted the union to give back most of the workers’ extra fees — additional per hour pay they got for working the night shift, for example, or missing a meal to provide coverage at the news station.
The Writers Guild successfully talked Fox 5 away from those demands — except for its insistence that fees be cut for all “Good Day New York” segment producers.
“We have given back other things in our negotiations, things that have impacted the segment producers,” said John Karalis, a shop steward at WNYW and producer for the 6 p.m. Fox 5 news.
Karalis said the workers gave up an hour on their overnight shift differential pay and made “other significant concessions” that touched all Writers Guild members.
“So it seems to me that segment producers would bear the brunt of the cuts the station is proposing,” he said, adding the bargaining group has asked for only a “small raise and (a) small increase to pension funds.”
A spokeswoman for Fox 5 said its latest offer to all Writers Guild members includes guaranteed wage increases.
“We don’t understand why Fox, which has so much money, would get stuck over these fees for a handful of employees each year,” said Karalis. “The network could lose $50,000 through an accounting error and not even feel it until an audit caught it.”
eff Schioppa, lead Writers Guild negotiator, said the union and workers were baffled by Fox 5’s hard line on segment producers.
“It’s really hard for us to understand why getting this contract done turns on whether we agree to let the company slash the pay of people who work on a show that is extremely popular and does very well for the company,” he said. “To cut the pay of these individuals by up to $7,000 doesn’t make sense.”
