Notes: Unpaid Staff Organization (UPSO) Council Meeting 9-12-13

Attending:  Ann Garrison*, Steve Zeltzer, Adrienne Lauby*

(*Council members)

This meeting replaced the meeting planned for Sept. 10 after only one person attended that meeting.  Due to the low turn out and lack of quorum among the Council Members, the meeting was information exchange only

1)  Steve noted that we have asked the KPFA managers to hold all staff meetings, with a meeting in the evening when unpaid staff can come, on at least a bi-monthly schedule.  These meetings have not happened since May/June.  We agreed to write Richard Pirodsky and remind him of our resolution.

2)  Adrienne and Ann talked about the difficulty of keeping UPSO functioning when most of the council members are not able to come to meetings or take on tasks between meetings.  There is no method in our by-laws for requiring attendance.  We could ask one person to resign in favor of the next runner up in the last election.  If there are two vacancies, we have to hold a special election. 

3)   Steve requested that the Unpaid Local Station Board (LSB) representatives give regular reports on their work on the LSB.  This is required by our by-laws.  We will schedule this for the next meeting and ask our representatives to report.  They are David Gans, Shahram Aghamir, Joy Moore & Frank Sterling.

4)   Our next meeting is Tuesday, Oct 8 at 7 pm and it is our quarterly membership meeting which is held in the Performance Studio at KPFA. 

We would like the major topic of discussion to be Richard Pirodsky’s initiative to open KPFB to a new programming schedule.  We will invite him to give a brief description of what is possible and open the floor for discussion.

These are also possible agenda topics for the membership meeting:  A)  Would we like a written policy on pre-emptions?  How much notice should a programmer generally have?  B)  Why are we not allowed to tell listeners an event is “free”?  Is this a reasonable interpretation of the law governing non-commercial radio?  C)  The strain on the UPSO organization due to non-participation.  D) New and very strict “Sensitive Language” policy.

Adrienne will send a copy of the new stricter policy to the unpaid staff list.

Meeting ended at 8:07

Following the meeting, this letter was sent to the KPFA manager.

Hi Richard,

We would like to have some focus at the next Unpaid Staff Organization meeting on the possibility of opening KPFB up for new programming.  Would you join us at our next meeting for this discussion?   Tues, Oct 8, 7 pm in the KPFA Performance Room.

We would also like to know where the policy against saying "free" in event announcements originated and what was the rationale behind it.

Finally, as I think you know, the Unpaid Staff Organization has asked you to hold all staff meetings on at least a bi-monthly schedule.  These meetings are long overdue.   Would you please
schedule a meeting where the unpaid staff can learn what is going on at the station and express our thoughts and opinions?  (Our resolution on this is below.)

Thank you.  I look forward to a positive discussion about this exciting new schedule for KPFB on Oct. 8.

Adrienne
cc: UPSO Council Members

5-14-13:  We affirm our February 13, 2012 resolution calling on KPFA managers to hold regular all-staff meetings on, at least, a bi-monthly schedule.

Additionally, we note KPFA's long-standing tradition of two meetings, with one in the morning to accommodate those who work in the building during the business hours and one in the evening to accommodate those who work elsewhere.  We call for both afternoon and evening meetings whenever there is an all-staff meeting.