NBC STRIKE TALK HEATS UP AFTER ‘FINAL’ OFFER

A strike against CBS and ABC began its sixth week Monday, and the possibility of another loomed at NBC, where executives awaited the next moves of a 2,800-member union that got the company’s “final” contract offer last week.

The strike now under way involves 525 members of the Writers Guild--news writers, editors and graphic artists. The guild last week began negotiating separately with CBS and ABC, and is scheduled to resume separate talks with each network today, a guild spokesman said.

Meanwhile, officials of the National Assn. of Broadcast Employees and Technicians plan to hold “informational meetings” with rank-and-file members this week to explain and discuss NBC’s contract offer.

However, the membership will not be asked to vote on anything--be it a strike, NBC’s proposals or whether to return to the bargaining table, said John Krieger, a NABET spokesman. Decisions on all that will be made later.

The union leadership has authority to call a strike. NABET last struck NBC in 1976 in a walkout that lasted seven weeks.

Most of its members at NBC are in technical fields, but 350 are writers in network or local news. The union represents them both on the network level and at eight radio stations and five TV stations that NBC owns, including KNBC-TV Channel 4 in Los Angeles.

All have been working without a contract since their previous four-year pact with NBC expired at midnight last Tuesday.

Negotiations on a new contract began March 3 in San Diego. The most recent union-management meeting was last Wednesday, a day after NBC made what it termed its “final offer.” Each side then left San Diego. No new talks are scheduled.

A major sticking point in the negotiations is an issue that helped spark the Writers Guild strike against CBS and ABC: management’s proposals to use temporary employees.

Krieger said that his union opposes NBC’s proposal to use temporary workers in all job categories, even on a limited basis of 4% of regular employees the first year and 6% the second. The union argues that this would weaken NABET and pave the way for wider use of cheaper part-time and temporary workers.

The union also wants a four-year contract, while NBC seeks only a two-year agreement.

In addition to the NBC-NABET contract dispute and the strike against CBS and ABC, all three networks face the June 30 expiration of their three-year contract with the Directors Guild of America. The contract also covers the major Hollywood studios.

The guild, which says it has 8,300 members, 4,000 of whom work in Southern California, never has gone on strike in its 51-year history, although it came close in 1984 in a dispute over videocassette royalties.