ustxtxb_obs_1980_03_14_50_00009-00000_000.pdf

Dan Hubig THE TEXAS OBSERVER 9 “merely defines the [1960] arrangement in more detail,” but in fact the 1961 pact added the wording mandating policies “mutualy agreeable to the University” and omitted a 1960 provision that the Council “furnish the land and the buildings.” Feldman believes that both the 1961 and 1979 contracts were “solely designed to protect the interests of UT at [the licensee’s] and the public’s expense.” Confused? So is the public. And the issue of who’s minding the station is still muddled. Even if under the 1979 contract the Council accepts a management role, can it practically do so? UT not only owns the football the Council doesn’t even have much say about the yard in which they play. Mary Ann Wooten, former KLRN/ KLRU Council vice-chairman, put it neatly. “As far as I can see,”,she said, “whoever controls the facilities and equipment controls the licensee.” To compensate for lack of operational resources, the Council pays UT an annual rental fee of $187,300 for facilities and equipment, less than a third of the $667,000 a 1979 audit shows UT donated to the Council by making its facilities and equipment available. The implication that under the new arrangements UT is getting more than money namely, a substantial measure of control is something the FCC will have to consider before it takes up KLRN/KLRU’s application for license renewal. Despite potentially license-shaking complications such as these, however, it’s been business as usual at UT. College of Communications officials, who until mid-January still managed the station, continued a series of staff reorganiped off the jobs of those who criticized the station management in testimony to the Council’s investigating committee last year. Eliminated in the latest cut, announced five days after the FCC field investigators left for Washington, was the job of Kirk McManus, a UT staffer who was one of the first to file a complaint with the FCC last year. Also dismissed was N. L. Willett, veteran chief engineer of KLRN. Both actions are effective Sept. 1. Ironically, one group of employees who have complained about the management of KLRN/KLRU for several years stands to gain from the Council’s new contrct with UT. Negotiation between station management and the KLRN Production Workers Guild \(Obs., began January 28, more than four years after the Guild requested recognition from the station. Until then, management had balked at orders from the National Labor Relations Board to bargain with the union, claiming that, since UT was managing the station, the production workers were public employees and so had no collective bargaining rights. The 1979 contract provision installing the Council as manager cut the ground out from under that claim, and the Council told the NLRB late last December it was dropping its appeal of the labor board’s order. The Guild has submitted a contract proposal, but management has yet to respond. Mike Archenhold, a cameraman on the Guild’s bargaining committee, says the Guild is pressing for job security and seniority for production crew members and an end to capricious grievance handling and job scheduling. On those key points the Guild expects to stand firm. What effect the new manager will have on the negotiations remains to be seen; but in the past few weeks, says Archenhold, “management has become very grudgingly conciliatory. They’re meeting us halfway, and that’s more than they’ve ever done before.”