Evans, Keegan Take Stand in News-Press/NLRB Trial

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.independent.com/news/2007/sep/12/evans-keegan-take-stand-news-pressnlrb-trial/

Job Performance, Union Activity Scrutinized
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
By Chris Meagher (Contact)

Talk that the National Labor Relations Board prosecuting team may have reached the end of their witness list began circulating Wednesday with the calling of Teamsters Union organizer Marty Keegan that morning. If he is indeed the last witness, as some have rumored, it would be union attorney Ira Gottlieb’s turn to begin calling witnesses in the federal labor law case against the Santa Barbara News-Press. It is expected that his witness list will be exhausted in less than two days. Then, of course, the attention will be turned to the other table, where attorney Barry Cappello will work through his list of witnesses, whose testimony he thinks will prove that the newspaper’s management was in the right in their decisions to fire eight reporters. Regardless of the timetable, it certainly is clear the hearing won’t be done anytime soon, despite the fact that this week was originally slated to be the last.

Former reporter Melissa Evans was back on the stand to begin the morning, being cross-examined by News-Press attorney Matthew Clarke. In a review of her performance evaluation, Clarke pointed out under a section detailing Evans’ use of time and resources she scored only a 2.5 out of 5. Evans “sometimes seems caught-up in things other than work, affecting her time here in the office,” read the review from associate editor Scott Steepleton.

Clarke asked if there was something in her personal life which might have contributed to her being distracted, and Evans explained that she took a medical leave for five weeks in 2006. During that time she didn’t do any writing. When she was in the office, she testified, her work wasn’t affected by her personal life, and part of the reason she took the leave was to prevent that from happening. Clarke pushed more, asking again if her medical problems affected her time at work. “It affected my time in the office in that I was gone,” Evans responded. Clarke continued to push, repeating his question. He then pointed out that during her time off is when many of her colleagues left, leaving the paper understaffed and in a situation she was needed. “You were absent,” he said, matter-of-factly.

NLRB attorney Stephen Wylie re-examined Evans, when she again repeated reasons why the group of employees attempting to join a union had taken a look at a contract between Newsday and its employees which had a provision for byline protection, which allows reporters to remove their name from stories that they deem to be either so heavily edited that they depart from the original intent or influenced by the publications business side in a way that violates the report's sense of journalistic integrity. “It certainly gives us power as reporters to protect ourselves,” she said. “Our names are on these stories.”

FULL story at link.