On Thursday, a group of volunteer DJs who’d been dismissed by the station or had chosen to resign or go on strike announced that they were forming a new nonprofit as an auxiliary to KDHX.
Called the League of Volunteer Enthusiasts of KDHX (or LOVE of KDHX), the new nonprofit would work “to ensure the volunteers of the station are formally recognized and that their contributions and efforts are properly heard and integrated into the ongoing operations of KDHX.”
Steve Pick, part of the group’s communications committee, says that an auxiliary organization exists as a support to the main organization and that he believes that filing with the state to become such a nonprofit should be relatively cut and dry.
“We stand for the values that KDHX has always embodied, which seem to be in remiss right now,” he says. “Which is why a lot of us are on strike. So we want to remind people of the good that volunteers can do for the community.”
Pick says the effort came after a unionization effort of the station’s associate members hit a snag this week. The group had previously submitted a National Labor Relations Board request to form a union on September 27. On October 10, the station refused to voluntarily recognize it, closing the measure for the moment.
Attorney Christopher Schwarz, one of those leading that push, says the associates can’t go further because of their volunteer status.
“We're trying to try to figure out if it's worth appealing to rejection,” he says, noting that there is precedent for the National Labor Relations Board to reject volunteer unions — but that some cases working their way through the court system might change the outlook.
In a board meeting in September, KDHX Board President Gary Pierson cast doubt on the ability of the group to form a collective bargaining agreement with the station and has since stated that the station would not recognize the new group.
“It is patently false that this group represents all of our volunteers,” Board President Gary Pierson said in a statement issued to the RFT on October 12. “Unpaid volunteers who have used their platforms to encourage donors to no longer support the station hurt everyone in the St. Louis community. Conflating this situation with the labor movement is inaccurate and misguided. Sadly, these volunteers who love KDHX are organizing under a false pretense.”
Schwarz says that the union effort isn’t the top priority. Instead, the group is focused on seating three new board members, who were voted in at a meeting of associate members last month. So far, the station has had no response to that request.
“The board’s in flux,” he says, pointing to two recent resignations, which include Matt Vianello and Board Secretary Nelie McNeal, who confirmed her departure to the RFT today by LinkedIn message. “We're trying to present this to the board next week to see if they will accept them, but we probably won't know until the board meeting [in November].”
This week also saw fired DJ Andrea Stein drop her lawsuit against the station. Stein told the RFT this afternoon that she did so in order to allow a larger group of ousted DJs to file something collectively, though she did not have details on what that might look like yet.
“Why take one case on and then have 10 more on top of it?” she said. “Let's just go after it as a group. So that's what we're doing.”
Previously a judge denied Stein’s request for a temporary restraining order and referred her to an internal mediation process. She says that though the Conflict Resolution Center has accepted her request for mediation, she has not heard back from KDHX.
Until then, Stein says she is focusing on positive upcoming efforts, like the Pines Fest this Saturday, which will see the first live performance of “Hey KDHX!” a protest anthem by Gerard Erker of the Mighty Pines, and the following weekend’s SOS Fest, which is expressly designed as a rally against current station leadership. There has been an outpouring of community support for the latter, and Stein says there have been numerous donations to a raffle that would help fund various efforts.
“It's just been a major uplifting feeling to see the support come out for all of us,” she says.
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