Content creators at the Pittsburgh Community Broadcasting Corporation have voted overwhelmingly to unionize with SAG-AFTRA, the union said in a statement on Friday.
Covered staff members include reporters, editors, DJs and other content creators at the company’s three broadcast stations: WESA (90.5 FM), WYEP (91.3 FM) and the HD station and streaming channel JazzWorks.
“We’ve worked for months to get to this point, but we wouldn’t have gotten here without every staff member who supported this effort,” the organizing committee said in a statement. “Pittsburgh is a union town, and we believe employees should have a say in our working conditions. We look forward to forming a representative bargaining committee and moving forward to ratifying our first contract.”
WESA and WYEP content creators asked station management to voluntarily recognize their union in August. Their union efforts will help create a more-equitable workplace, the organization said. The vote in favor of forming a union was 96%, SAG-AFTRA said.
“We are thrilled to welcome PCBC workers into SAG-AFTRA,” Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, the national executive of SAG-AFTRA, said on Friday. “Investing in good, sustainable local journalism is an investment in the community, so this is a win not only for members, but for Pittsburgh itself.”
SAG-AFTRA represents content creators at several other Pittsburgh-based media outlets, including KDKA (1020 AM) and three television stations.
The Pittsburgh station group is the second to unionize with SAG-AFTRA in a week. On Wednesday, content creators at Charlotte public radio station WFAE voted to unionize, with over 70 percent of the company’s editorial staffers signing a petition to do so.
