TVP unions cry foul; Wprost launches job-search site
Plans to restructure national broadcaster Telewizja Polska (TVP) have run into a roadblock as trade unions ready themselves for a walkout that could come as soon as this week, union members said last week.
Management of the nation's No. 1 broadcaster is looking to launch reforms next year in an attempt to reduce costs and improve efficiency and competitiveness of private stations. Officials have described the plan as a breakdown of the old, state-financed broadcaster with more than 6,700 employees into small self-financing units, as many as possible.
At issue, of course, for workers is job and salary, major concerns in any corporate restructuring. But so far, nobody is talking, at least openly and in detail about these substantive issues. Instead, the rhetoric has centered around preliminary gestures such as the clarity, preparation and general presentation of the program for transforming the public broadcaster.
The problem is that only four weeks remain before the restructuring act is scheduled to begin. Core to this restructuring are performance-based salaries and a creation of agencies that will have to vie for contracts with other independent suppliers.
But despite the general description, much has yet to be defined, notably with these core agencies, said Jaroslaw Najmola, head of the Solidarity trade union at TVP. "Nobody really knows what their status will be," he said. "Journalists had to choose one agency without knowing what it will be responsible for and they had four hours for that."
Union and TVP chiefs, including TVP President Robert Kwiatkowski, met mid-November to iron out differences. But, Najmola said, few details were forthcoming. "We asked about total costs of production at TVP and the answer was that it would be possible to make such estimates in three years' time," Najmola said. "It's all as though somebody invented the reform but he wouldn't know how much it was going to cost."
Kwiatkowski couldn't possibly describe the costs of the reform, said Pawel Sosnowski, TVP spokesman who was present at the summit between workers and management. "They can be estimated only after the reform is implemented," he said. "The anxiety of TVP's personnel is a natural feeling since such broad changes are feared as something unknown."
In addition to the walkout, workers are discussing the possibility of a less symbolic move, stopping work for an indefinite period of time. "Several trade unions have already signed an appeal to TVP's staff to participate in the referendum on that," Najmola said.
At the same time, Najmola said he didn't think the strike would immediately cripple the broadcaster as management was prepared for the worst. "To my knowledge, they have emergency studios from where they will broadcast when the strike starts," Najmola said. "It's again, reacting to effects instead of treating the reasons of illness."
Workers' web
Weekly Wprost magazine has teamed up with Jobs&Adverts in the publisher's launch this month of a new web site, http://kariera.wprost.pl, devoted to the job market. "We decided to work with Jobs&Adverts because they work with Stern weekly in Germany on the same kind of project," said Amadeusz Krol, the internet coordinator at Wprost said.
Under general terms of the agreement, Jobs&Adverts provides the job database and Wprost supplies editorial content specific to the job market, company officials said. Wprost is a weekly magazine with a national circulation of 320,000. Jobs&Adverts, which started up here in June, specializes in on-line headhunting with 10 branch offices worldwide.
During its first five days on line, the web site had 10,000 visitors, Krol said. The site was launched Nov. 17.
The costs of the undertaking, which Krol described as "modest" without giving further details, are mostly covered through the site's ad revenue. "Jobs&Adverts gets the prestige of its database being screened with our logo and they widen their reach," Krol said.
Wprost's new site is part of an on-line build out for the print publisher. Apart from its general web site (www.wprost.pl), in October Wprost started an interactive site, "Gosc Cafe Wprost"(www.cafewprost.pl), which enables on-line interviews with politicians and showbiz personalities.
Stitch in Time
In its bid to host the World Expo in 2009, Wroclaw is moving to popularize the little-known provincial town in international circles. When European readers of Time magazine reach for the end of the year edition of the American weekly to find out who was chosen as person of the century, the city of Wroclaw is banking on the fact that at the same time they will also discover the Lower Silesian capital. "Wroclaw is the greatest unknown city in Europe," said Jacek Protasiewicz, director of Wroclaw's promotion office and spokesman for the city board. While placing Breslau the city's pre-war name on the world's historical map might be easy, the awareness of Wroclaw as a post-war Polish city remains relatively low, Protasiewicz said. After considering a range of international popular publications such as Time, Newsweek, The Economist, among others, the city chose Time.
The four-page ad will appear in the Dec. 31 issue of the European edition of Time that hits the newsstand on Dec. 23. For Wroclaw authorities, appearing in the heavily promoted "person of the century" special edition of time is an added plus. The ad will hit U.S. newsstands Jan. 17.
But this chance to put Wroclaw in the mail boxes, on coffee tables and on executives' desks around the world does not come cheaply. The four-page city profile will put a $155,000 hole in the city budget. "Negotiations with Time didn't rank among the easiest (of negotiations)," Zdrojewski said. The price tag includes a 50% discount and a month-long promotion of the city on Time's web page with a link to Wroclaw's internet address.
