NBC AND UNION MARKING TIME : Broadcast Technicians Could Strike at Any Time . . . ‘We Want to Preserve the Element of Surprise’

A threatened walkout of 2,800 NBC television and radio technicians, writers, camera operators and other members of the National Assn. of Broadcast Employees and Technicians was still on hold Friday, but union officials said a strike could begin at any time.

If and when it does, the effects would be felt by everyone at the top-rated network--from Johnny Carson to Tom Brokaw to the local news programs on KNBC Channel 4.

“We want to preserve the element of surprise,” union spokesman John Krieger said Friday, nine days after NABET’s four-year pact with the network expired.

The last time NABET struck was in 1976, in a walkout that lasted seven weeks. Union members remained on the job for 19 months after their contract with NBC expired on March 31, 1983, but the network agreed to make that pact retroactive.

When the four-year contract expired this time, however, NBC officials set April 21 as the deadline for acceptance of the new contract. If the management offer is not approved by then, it will not be retroactive.

“Our membership is very solid. They are not interested in (NBC’s last offer),” said Carrie Biggs-Adams, president of NABET Local 53, which represents NBC employees in Los Angeles.

According to Krieger, the same sentiment was reflected at rank-and-file meetings across the country this week. However, NBC’s contract proposal has not been submitted to a ratification vote.

Though pay hikes were a concern in contract talks that began March 2 in San Diego, the key issue has been NBC’s proposal to begin using temporary employees. NABET officials fear that NBC’s plan to fill 4% of its positions with temporary employees beginning this year will start an irreversible erosion of NABET membership and bargaining power.

That same issue helped spark a March 2 strike against CBS and ABC by 525 news writers and graphic artists represented by the Writers Guild of America. Barring a weekend agreement, that walkout will enter its seventh week on Monday.

Since Wednesday, negotiating teams from both ABC and CBS have been meeting daily with guild negotiators in marathon sessions in New York, but no progress has been announced.

“Right now we’re not characterizing (the talks between WGA officials and CBS/ABC management) at all,” WGA spokesman Martin Waldman said Friday. “We’re very guarded about what is being said.”

Waldman acknowledged that a NABET walkout could mean a boost to the WGA, many of whose striking members perform the same writing and editing functions for CBS and ABC that NABET members perform for NBC.

“We sympathize with the Writers Guild,” Krieger said, but added that NABET’s differences with NBC over a new contract are similar but not identical.

He said that NABET leaders are exploring other means of applying pressure, short of an actual walkout, including printing and distributing handbills about the union’s grievances and informational picketing.

Strike authorization was approved last month by NABET’s members, but union leadership has been mum about when a walkout might be ordered. Krieger would only say that the NABET negotiating committee “will not be able to sit on the membership for long.”

Following a month of unsuccessful talks with NBC management in San Diego, the NABET negotiating committee disbanded April 2 and its members returned to their locals in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Cleveland, Atlanta, Boston and Washington. NBC operates network broadcast facilities or owned-and-operated television or radio stations in each of those urban centers.

KNBC-TV Channel 4 in Los Angeles, for example, employs about 200 of the 724 members of NABET Local 53 headquartered in Burbank. The remaining NABET members work for the NBC production facilities in Burbank, where “The Tonight Show,” game shows such as “Wheel of Fortune,” soap operas such as “Days of Our Lives” and network prime-time programs such as the sitcom “Roomies” are all taped. Segments of NBC’s “Today” show also originate live from the Burbank facility.

KNBC’s daily lineup of 3 1/2 hours of news programming would be affected by a walkout. Though the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists represents most of KNBC’s on-air reporters, NABET members write news stories, handle cameras, edit videotape and oversee graphics at the station.

In the event of a strike, Biggs-Adams said that NABET would probably use “the flying wedge”--one of the tactics pioneered by WGA members at KCBS-TV Channel 2 (see accompanying story)--to hamper KNBC’s newsgathering efforts.

The 74 Writers Guild members on strike against CBS, in addition to picketing CBS Television City on Fairfax Avenue and the KCBS/KNX-AM (1070) headquarters on Sunset Boulevard, regularly dispatch pickets to interrupt KCBS’s live newscasts. The striking newswriters form a “flying wedge,” jam their picket signs between on-air correspondents and their mini-cam crews and make certain that KCBS’s home audience sees the picket signs.

“It works great,” Biggs-Adams said.