BBG Watch Commentary
The Washington Times reported that “in a notice recently posted in the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) offices in Florida and Washington, D.C., officials acknowledged that they “failed” to satisfy bargaining obligations in connection with the layoffs at the BBG’s Office of Cuba Broadcasting.”
There is, however, a worrisome note in the newspaper’s report.
“Spokeswoman Letitia King also said the final amount of back pay for a dozen employees remains unresolved.
‘The calculations are taking place now’, she said in an email.
But, she added, neither the BBG nor the Office of Cuba Broadcasting has the money to retain the positions, and so they’ll still likely be cut as ‘budget limitations necessitate’.
‘Our goal in resolving this case is to minimize any further disruption and expense for the agency’, she said.”
BBG Chairman Jeff Shell and the BBG board must make sure that International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) executives are not planning to punish RIFed employees whom they have victimized for many years by abolishing their positions. It is highly-paid executive and bureaucratic IBB positions that ought to be cut to produce both savings for U.S. taxpayers and savings needed to pay illegally RIFed OCB employees what they lost and deserve and to allow them to return to work. Anything else would be viewed as a retaliation by the IBB management against OCB employees.
The IBB Office of General Counsel has had the largest percentage growth of staff positions, 150%, in the last seven years. The cuts should start in the GC Office which is responsible for some of the most spectacular legal losses in its blind support of bad management decisions.
The overall growth of IBB staff positions in the last seven years has been 37% at the cost of millions of dollars while OCB employees were illegally RIFed and many other broadcasters lost their jobs and their programs and transmissions as a result of IBB management’s decisions.
