Dear Pat Dolan:
You may, or may not know me. I have had the privilege of working for News 12 from the day it started until, 1991. Before that I had the privilege of working for Cablevision starting in 1984, first at “Studio 14 – On Cablevision” and then at your former Floral Park facility, for Rainbow. I doubt my TV career would have been as successful, had it not been for my experience with working with Cablevision.
I have admired your work and your ability to look at matters objectively and with an open mind. Your decision to once ban American lapel pins to protect the integrity of News 12 took guts. Unfortunately, it was misunderstood by the general public, as being anti-American as apposed to being non-bias.
I’m writing to you because of another misunderstanding I wish to have cleared up. It has always been my dream to work in television. My mother died in 1985 when I was 19, and I was left with nothing but two younger siblings and my job at Cablevision that paid $5 an hour. I was taught, that with hard work, a person in this great country can have a good life. I did what I had to, to survive. When News 12 started, I got up at
The misunderstanding happened in 1991. As you probably know, there was a union threat. Yes, it was about money. People with college degrees were making less than what they could have been making at McDonald’s. It was rumored that an earlier union threat at Rainbow ended with workers getting raises that were enough to live on. That’s all anybody was ever asking for. Nobody ever intended to vote “yes” for a union.
I’m sure you know very well, what happened afterwards. The right for hard workers, like myself, to vote, was taken away from them, even though they would have voted “no”. Instead of the living wage they were hoping for, they ended up jobless.
A federal judge was convinced this wasn’t union busting, because of documents that proved News 12 was losing money and that the layoffs were for financial reasons. Then the moment the verdict is read, News 12 expands to The Bronx, NJ and CT and buys things like an expensive helicopter. That’s typical of what bankrupt companies do? To add insult to injury, a letter was sent out to the remaining Cablevision employees by Mr. Azznara, Vice President and General Manager of Cablevision, bragging about how the layoffs stopped the union election and how it would be futile to attempt another one.
To quote Mr. Azznara, “Needless to say, there has been no election at News 12”.
At the last News 12 reunion party, Charles Dolan, your father, proudly told the crowd how he started his first Cable Company in Manhattan by illegally putting up cable along the East River, how he was caught with a picture of his cables in a newspaper photo and bragging about getting away with it.
Is that what Cablevision is all about? Breaking laws for their own benefit? Is there no shame? No remorse? No guilt? No respect for the law or for the hard workers who make Cablevision what it is?
As if I haven’t suffered enough…Cablevision lawyers sent me threatening letters to make me take this website down.... .at my new job at Court TV, my boss came up to me to ask me to take this website down. He said he had a call from Cablevision. Is there no respect for free speech? There was a need to track me down in order to shut me up, like a bully would? Yet, you run a news organization in this great country, based on the very freedoms your company tries to take away from others.
How un-American can you get?
