Was Cal's new content studio a union-busting effort?

Howdy, and welcome to your Thursday FOIAball, coming to you live from Scottsbluff, Nebraska, where I had my first-ever Runza. 

Quite good.

In April, Cal-Berkeley announced a plan to fundamentally change the way college athletics departments market and promote themselves. 

The university’s press release was jam-packed with buzzwords: groundbreaking, innovative, cutting-edge, fully integrated.

The initiative took three of the school’s existing departments—communications, creative, and marketing—and moved them under one umbrella, dubbed Strawberry Creek Studios. 

The goal? Going viral and getting rich. The school listed two primary objectives: revenue generation and authentic storytelling. 

At a time when college sports are making more money and attracting more eyeballs than ever, it makes sense to reconsider how things have always worked. 

Cal said they were doing more than that, calling it “a complete redefinition of how we operate.”

According to Front Office Sports, Cal is the first D-I university “to rid itself of traditional marketing and communications departments and replace it with a content creation-based venture.”

Rid and replace they sure did. The school let go of every single marketing, communications, and creative staffer in the department, which totaled around two dozen people. 

The university then listed some 20 new roles with Strawberry Creek Studios. 

But this forward-thinking new venture might have relied on one of the oldest tricks in the book: a little bit of union-busting. 

Unreported until now is the fact that staffers in Cal’s athletics department had voted to unionize just weeks before the layoffs. 

And by unilaterally dismissing them, the school seems to have ignored the bargaining rights staffers had just fought for. 

Strawberry Creek Studios came at a time when buzz about Cal’s football program was high. The school poached Oregon’s defense coordinator, Tosh Lupoi, and was returning its starting quarterback. While that likely wasn’t the driving factor in the reorg, it surely was, to use another buzzword, a great bit of synergy. 

Unfortunately, that enthusiasm didn’t last long. The Bears are 3-6, and headlines about this season are using terms like “messy” and “spiraled.”

It's not just the football team that is unraveling. The school is facing other negative headlines. In August, a lawsuit alleged a softball coach coerced a former player into a relationship and then retaliated against her. 

Probably not the way the school planned to “prioritize brand advancement.” 

It’s hard to say exactly what the venture has accomplished that wouldn’t have occurred absent its creation. 

In October, the school won an award for the launch of Strawberry Creek Studios from Insight into Academia, a website that highlights “best practices in higher education”

That honor isn’t for anything the studio has produced. It’s literally just a trophy for the announcement. 

In the piece, Insight into Academia goes into more detail about what’s changed.

“The initiative is built around four strategic pillars—student-athlete recruitment and retention; brand and revenue partnerships; donor, fan, and alumni engagement; and elevating the Cal and UC Berkeley brand—each of which is now served by integrated teams rather than siloed departments.”

The article seems to imply that prior to this, Cal staffers were working less than one day a month while also ignoring every single sport except football.

“Strawberry Creek Studios also enables a 365-day approach to audience development: rather than concentrating storytelling around six or seven home football games, the model treats recruiting classes, transfer additions, student-athlete personalities, and offseason access as year-round opportunities to build affinity and commercial value.”

I mean, maybe Cal’s former staff refused to upload videos from away games, but I kinda doubt it. And it’s not like Cal didn’t have a modern media presence before this. The school’s ten most viral TikToks were all done by former staff. 

While it all sounds “revolutionary,” is it that fundamentally different from what any other athletics department is doing these days?

So what made it necessary to let them all go? 

On April 30, just two weeks after the layoffs, an “Unfair Practice Charge” against the university was filed with the state’s Public Employment Relations Board, a copy of which FOIAball obtained. 

Back in September, the UAW’s Communications, Marketing, and Sales Professional (ComMaS) group petitioned to certify a new unit within the California university system.

Numerous professionals across the California university system have voted to unionize with UAW recently, including employees in research and student services.

The ComMaS group is not just sports staffers at Berkeley, but 1,600 individuals in departments across the entire system. 

The push for ComMaS unionization cited the same headaches we all have right now. 

“Workloads are increasing. It never seems to be ‘a good time’ for that overdue promotion. Flexible work arrangements are constantly being ‘reevaluated’ or revoked. Pay is stagnating as cost-of-living skyrockets. “

An election was held from Feb. 25 to March 10. The results were overwhelmingly in favor, with 82% voting to unionize.

According to the charge, the union was certified on March 23. 

On its website, the union stated that “while negotiations are underway for a Collective Bargaining Agreement between ComMaS-UAW and the UC, the UC must negotiate and reach an agreement with ComMaS before making changes to our working conditions.”

“Doing otherwise,” they said, “would be a ‘unilateral change’ and a violation of ‘Dynamic Status Quo.’” 

Which seems to be what happened to Cal’s athletics comms department just 18 days later. 

Of the employees let go, 17 individuals were represented by the union. 

According to the complaint, Cal Athletics did not notify the union of the layoffs in advance.

“The University announced these changes directly to the affected employees without providing the Union with prior notice or an opportunity to bargain over the decision.”

And just because the school had already made the decision, that didn’t absolve it of the requirement to meet with the union. 

“​​Even when an employer makes a non-negotiable decision,” the charge notes, “it must provide notice and a meaningful opportunity to bargain over the reasonably foreseeable effects of its decision that are within the scope of representation.” 

The complaint against the university appears to still be ongoing, and neither the union nor the university responded to inquiries about its status. 

However, outside of the layoffs, the parties reached a tentative contract in September. 

The announcement says the deal includes “significant, across-the-board wage increases” for communications personnel across the system. 

Unfortunately for those 17 staffers, they won’t get to reap the spoils of their hard-fought victory. 

But at least we’re getting more content. 

Thanks for reading! I’ll see you next week!

Oski via Icon Sportswire / Contributor / Getty