Writers to Vote on CBS Contract

Writers Guild of America negotiators recommended Tuesday that its members approve a new three-year contract with CBS, possibly marking the end to a network strike for about 300 of the 525 guild news writers who walked off the job at CBS and ABC on March 2.

Striking writers at CBS network facilities in New York and Washington, D.C., as well as owned-and-operated TV and radio stations in Chicago, New York and Los Angeles, could vote on the proposed contract which calls for a 3% annual raise as early as Thursday morning, said guild spokesman Martin Waldman. A total of 74 guild employees who write news and promotional advertising at KCBS-TV Channel 2, KNX-AM (1070) and CBS Television City in Los Angeles will be among those voting on the new contract.

“We will have two steps here,” said West Coast guild spokeswoman Cheryl Rhoden. “First, it goes to our board of directors for review and recommendation. Then it goes to the membership. It could all happen Thursday.”

Negotiators for ABC began meeting with the guild separately two weeks ago. There was no report on progress in those talks which affect about 40% of the striking writers.

All of ABC’s Writers Guild members work in New York or Washington. In Los Angeles, ABC news writers are represented by the National Assn. of Broadcast Employees and Technicians (NABET).

The guild negotiating committee had not worked out a pact with ABC as of Tuesday evening, Waldman said. Negotiators for ABC began meeting with the guild separately two weeks ago. There was no report on progress in those talks which affect about 40% of the striking writers.

According to Waldman, the two dozen members of the guild negotiating committee bivouacked for six hours in New York on Tuesday to review the new proposal CBS offered on Monday before recommending ratification to rank-and-file members.

“After weeks of intensive bargaining, CBS has offered the Writers Guild of America a comprehensive contract package to settle the six-week-old strike,” said CBS spokesman George Schweitzer in a prepared statement. “We believe this offer reflects the interests and needs of the company and we are hopeful the guild and its membership will find it a fair and workable formula for the future.”

Rhoden said that arbitration provisions of the old contract remain intact and that CBS demands that employees could be fired “at will” were eliminated in bargaining.

Job security and the network’s right to hire temporary employees were the key issues, Waldman said. Under the new contract, CBS would have a limited right to hire temporary employees but guild members would be given bonus severance pay in the event of layoff and would retain recall rights. CBS would have the right to fire an employee for cause.

The proposal is the result of a series of marathon sessions with network negotiators conducted over the last week. The last CBS-guild session before the pact was announced ran from 10 a.m. to midnight on Saturday.

The guild negotiating committee caucused privately on Sunday before meeting throughout the day Monday with ABC’s negotiating team.

“The final formalized proposal came to us Sunday, but points of clarification were ironed out Monday,” Waldman said.

At Writers Guild “strike central” in Los Angeles, the proposal was met with optimism, but guild leaders had no immediate plans to lift picket lines around Television City on Fairfax Avenue or at Columbia Square, the Sunset Boulevard headquarters of KCBS and KNX.

Meanwhile, 2,800 members of the National Assn. of Broadcast Employees and Technicians enters its third week of working without a contract today, following the breakdown of negotiations April 3 between the Maryland-based union and NBC. The network has given NABET a Tuesday deadline to accept the contract or members will lose pay increases averaging $30 a week retroactive to the April 1 expiration of the old contract.

Negotiators for NABET, which represents cameramen, engineers, producers, writers and other off-camera personnel, has not submitted the network’s proposal to its membership for a vote, but a series of “informational” meetings held around the country on the NBC offer last week revealed widespread disapproval among the rank and file, according to NABET spokesman John Krieger. Like the Writers Guild, NABET officials objected to an NBC proposal that would allow the network to begin hiring temporary personnel on a limited basis.

Krieger said NABET planned informational picketing, handbilling and other actions short of a strike. Carrie Biggs-Adams, president of NABET Local 53 in Burbank, said 3,000 handbills critical of NBC and its parent company General Electric were handed out at Dodger Stadium on Saturday. Local 53 represents 724 NBC employees, including about 200 behind-the-camera personnel at KNBC-TV Channel 4.