The Boston Herald reports iHeartMedia’s agreement with the union is a major concession from its initial threats to refuse to honor union contracts and force staffers to reapply for their jobs.
The radio company and union reached an interim agreement last night setting out terms of the new deal, sources said.
“The Employer agrees to recognize the union as the exclusive bargaining representative for all full-time and regular part-time announcers, producers, editors, writers and production assistants employed by WBZ-AM,” according to the proposed agreement obtained by the Herald.
“The Employer agrees to offer employment to all current union represented employees of WBZ-AM who are listed on the attached exhibit at their current salary or hourly rate of pay.”The head of the union declined to comment about the proposed deal but in a memo to employees said iHeartMedia had proposed a much more acceptable deal for employees.
“While we have many questions and still have a lot of work to do to make the proposal acceptable, it is a dramatic improvement over the letter they sent last week,” wrote Tom Higgins, a local director of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.
“We have had great support from the public, but it would not be helpful to the process to have this information go beyond our BZ radio membership,” Higgins added. “We don’t want to jeopardize our progress by negotiating in the press.”
The planned sale of ’BZ Radio to iHeartMedia was triggered by the proposed megamerger between CBS Radio and Entercom Communications. That merger forced Entercom and CBS Radio to divest some properties, including WBZ Radio.
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