Feb. 17, 2022: Almost 18 months have passed since the SAG-AFTRA unit of NPR presented the union’s demands for improving racial and ethnic diversity, equity and inclusion in our organization.
Amid the COVID-19 pandemic and months of financial uncertainty for the company, the union and NPR’s management rallied together to codify many of those demands from September 2020 into a robust collective bargaining agreement that was ratified in October 2021.
Separate from the union’s efforts, management has made its own strides towards the North Star of diversity set by CEO John Lansing. In February 2021, NPR’s inaugural DEI manager, Whitney Maddox, began leading internal anti-racism conversations and targeted efforts to address inequities facing women of color on staff.
Still, despite this progress, NPR has a ways to go in reflecting the public it serves — through both its staffing and its content — and meeting its other DEI goals.
The recent series of departures of staffers of color from across the organization — some headline-making, many below the public’s radar — have only underlined what has long been true: The need for change is urgent, and a commitment to change must be sustained.
The SAG-AFTRA unit’s DEI Accountability Committee and shop stewards are heartened by Lansing’s continued insistence that diversity, equity and inclusion are essential to NPR’s future.
However, we have yet to see effective follow-through on every commitment. For example, while there have been improvements in the racial and ethnic diversity among recent hires, many SAG-AFTRA members see supporting and retaining staffers of color as a key challenge for management, according to a recent union survey.
Dismantling the barriers that have kept NPR from fully achieving its mission will take collective action. The committee and the stewards recognize they will need to continue to engage with all SAG-AFTRA members and allies outside of the union in order to truly improve DEI.
We offer the following recommendations to management as we push towards our goals:
Review how DEI-related directives and updates are communicated to lower-level managers and across different divisions and teams to try to ensure everyone in the organization is working from the same set of information
Review how NPR uses data to evaluate the effectiveness of DEI-related initiatives in order to fill gaps in data gathering
Set up a schedule for more regular updates to staff about DEI-related efforts at the division level
Signed,
NPR SAG-AFTRA Shop Stewards and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Accountability Committee
Read our full report here.