Hawaii Tribune-Herald Editor David Bock fired veteran reporter and union activist Dave Smith this week for alleged misconduct involving the secret recording of a meeting with newspaper management.

Smith was suspended indefinitely without pay on March 9 along with reporter Peter Sur for their roles in making the recording.

Sur was reinstated at the newspaper on March 11 following a one-and-a-half day unpaid suspension for allegedly aiding in Smith’s misconduct by providing him with a digital recording device that was used to record the meeting.

Smith recorded the meeting between himself, Bock and another supervisor in Bock’s office on March 3 because he believed the meeting, which concerned his alleged failure to write enough bylined stories for the newspaper, was potentially a disciplinary matter that allowed him the right to have a union representative attend the meeting with him. When he was denied permission to have a union representative attend the meeting, he placed a digital voice recorder, given to him by Sur, in his pocket and recorded the meeting without the supervisors’ knowledge.

Representation at such meetings is a right that union employees have under federal law governing labor-management relations in the workplace. About 50 employees of the newspaper, including Smith and Sur, are represented by the Hawaii Newspaper Guild Local 39117, TNG/CWA, which has filed formal grievances against the newspaper on behalf of both employees.

Secretly recording a meeting is a legal practice in 38 states, including Hawaii, and the Tribune-Herald had no policy at the time regarding the recording of meetings between management and employees.

The firing by letter from Editor David Bock dated April 26, 2006, caps a recent series of aggressive disciplinary actions taken by the company against union employees, which a union administrative official has termed a campaign of union busting by the Tribune-Herald, which is owned by the Stephens Media Group of Las Vegas, Nev., whose parent company is the Arkansas-based Stephens Group.

Smith, a reporter for 18 years at the newspaper and a member of the union’s contract negotiating team, is the second union activist fired from the newspaper in six months. Sixteen-year reporter and long-time union shop steward Hunter Bishop was fired on Oct. 27, 2005, for raising issues about the rights of a fellow employee being called into a potentially disciplinary meeting with management. A grievance was filed seeking reinstatement on Bishop’s behalf.

On March 30 the National Labor Relations Board filed a formal charge against the newspaper claiming that it failed to provide information to the union regarding the investigation leading to Bishop’s firing and the reasons he was fired, as required by law. A hearing is set on the Board charges on June 13, 2006, in Honolulu.

Formal grievances also have been filed by the union on behalf of three other union workers at the newspaper who have been disciplined or laid-off over the past eight months.

Guild Administrative Officer Wayne Cahill said the company is clearly waging a union-busting campaign. “This company has declared all-out war on its union employees,” aimed at intimidating employees in the workplace and weakening the union’s strength, he said.

Labor-management talks on a new contract have been stalled since 2002, when employees received their last wage increase of one percent. Bargaining has broken down over the company’s insistence on a new “management rights” clause in the contract that would enable the company to dismantle the union, Cahill said.


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