A contempt of court docket ruling could also be within the playing cards for Wendy McCaw, the Santa Barbara Information-Press proprietor and co-publisher who shamelessly filed for chapter earlier this summer season. She owes almost $3.5 million to her former newsroom staff and a former unit of the Teamsters in recompense for flagrant violations of labor legislation courting again 16 years.
Since final November, the Nationwide Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has been petitioning the Washington, D.C., District Court docket to problem a contempt of court docket ruling in opposition to Ampersand Publishing LLC, the corporate arrange by McCaw to run the Information-Press, for its “inexcusable neglect … certainly its willful refusal” to adjust to a 2012 board order that was upheld within the D.C. Circuit Court docket of Appeals in 2017.
“Orders usually are not issued by courts for events to obey at their leisure,” the board states.
The petition was robotically placed on maintain after Ampersand filed for chapter on July 21 this 12 months. However in a memorandum dated August 21, the board requested the district court docket to elevate the maintain and proceed with a contempt of court docket discovering, together with “potential fines” and attorneys charges. Prior to now, some employers present in contempt have been slapped with each day fines till they complied with board orders.
“The NLRB’s main goal in looking for a contempt discovering is to vindicate the integrity of its personal authority in addition to that of the D.C. Circuit…,” the board acknowledged. “Contempt proceedings … have the first goal of upholding the dignity and authority of the court docket.”
Ampersand has till September 12 to file a response, and the board has till September 19 to answer. Quickly after that, the district court docket is predicted to rule on the query of whether or not to elevate the chapter maintain and proceed with deliberations on a discovering of contempt in opposition to Ampersand or McCaw.
McCaw, Obey the Legislation!
On behalf of dozens of my former colleagues, the union we organized, and the neighborhood we served; and as a reporter and union chief who was unfairly fired by McCaw, I fervently hope the judges will do the suitable factor. Perhaps the courts will lastly catch as much as our native plutocrat, be sure that my colleagues are paid what they’re owed, and — for as soon as — gather some significant penalties. How are you going to be discovered responsible of breaking labor legislation for years on finish and get away with by no means making your staff entire?
Ampersand’s Chapter 7 chapter submitting for liquidation is just not an strange case. Everyone on the town is aware of that McCaw, a Hope Ranch resident, purchased the paper in 2000 as a billionaire twice over and will repay her money owed with out blinking a watch. We glance with appreciable skepticism at McCaw’s 2014 switch of the Information-Press constructing in De la Guerra Plaza and the printing press on Kellogg Avenue in Goleta (complete assessed worth: $27 million) to different corporations that she arrange, apparently in order that they wouldn’t be on the books or on the hook at Ampersand.
By the best way, I don’t stand to get a cent from McCaw, although I consider she fired me and 7 different reporters illegally in retaliation for union activism, simply months after we voted to hitch the Teamsters in September 2006. We misplaced our case to a panel of anti-union appellate judges in 2012.
However McCaw lastly was discovered responsible of breaking the legislation, having, within the board’s phrases, dedicated a bunch of “flagrant unfair labor practices” starting in 2007. Within the saga of the Information-Press Mess, as it’s domestically identified, it took a decade, amid a thicket of appeals by McCaw’s union-busting attorneys and Republican politicking in opposition to the labor board in Congress — however in 2017, the D.C. Court docket of Appeals ordered McCaw to discount along with her staff in good religion, signal a union contract along with her newsroom, and cease “interfering with, restraining, or coercing” staff who have been merely exercising their rights as union members.
Particularly, the court docket discovered, McCaw illegally gave the Teamsters the runaround in contract negotiations, fired two extra employees, suspended benefit pay after the union vote, and employed temps to displace reporters.
McCaw didn’t adjust to the court docket order. Then, in 2019, an appellate court docket upheld a board ruling requiring her to pay $2.2 million to make her staff entire and compensate the Teamsters for bills incurred throughout years of bad-faith bargaining on the Information-Press.
The Teamsters unit we joined, the Graphic Communications Convention, lately cut up off from the Teamsters to type the Printing Packaging & Manufacturing Employees Union of North America. With curiosity, the quantity McCaw owes her staff and the Printing Packaging & Manufacturing union has grown to just about $3.5 million.
In chapter court docket paperwork, McCaw claims that Ampersand has solely $532.96 within the financial institution, plus $116,000 in property, together with accounts receivable, workplace furnishings, autos, and art work. The Information-Press historic archive, saved on microfiche and in newsprint clippings, is listed in court docket paperwork as an asset with an “unknown” worth.
The full quantity that McCaw owes to 818 collectors, together with former subscribers, staff, companies, nonprofits, faculties, and authorities companies, is $5.1 million, the document reveals. Additionally included within the complete is a $1.5 million mortgage that McCaw made to the Information-Press in 2014. The full apparently leaves out almost $1.3 million in curiosity that McCaw owes to her former staff and the union.
On Thursday, an preliminary assembly of McCaw’s collectors was scheduled to be held on the U.S. Chapter Court docket: Central District of California, by telephone, starting at 9 a.m. However at the moment, due to the general public’s curiosity within the case, Jerry Namba, the court-appointed chapter trustee, says he’ll announce a postponement to 1 p.m.
Namba will run Thursday’s assembly, at which McCaw’s collectors can query a consultant of Ampersand about McCaw’s property. Collectors usually are not required to attend, and no choice within the case will probably be made. The assembly is public. The decision-in quantity is (866) 918-7970, utilizing the code 5723963.
Melinda Burns is an award-winning investigative journalist with 40 years of expertise within the enterprise, together with 21 on the Information-Press. As a neighborhood service, she gives her experiences to a number of publications in Santa Barbara County, on the identical time, at no cost.
