STRIKE PROSPECTS LOOM AS NBC AFFILIATES MEET

The whiff of war: NBC says it must consider putting into effect its final contract offer to 2,800 employees because of a negotiating impasse. Do that, says their union, and you may have a strike.

So goes the latest round between the Peacock Network and the National Assn. of Broadcast Employees and Technicians, whose members have been working without a contract since March 31 at NBC and the five TV stations and eight radio stations it owns.

No new talks are scheduled. None have been held since the union’s old contract expired and NBC made what it called its final offer. The union found it unacceptable on various grounds, including job security and the union’s desire for a four-year pact instead of the two years NBC proposed.

Questions about the prospects and impact of a strike are likely to be raised by managers of NBC’s affiliated TV stations as they open their annual convention at the Century Plaza in Los Angeles today. The union, which last struck NBC in 1976 and stayed out for seven weeks, represents mostly technical workers, but includes 350 writers and producers in network and local news operations.

Although the union complained to the National Labor Relations Board last month that NBC was refusing to bargain in good faith--a charge denied by the company--both sides have generally been playing a waiting game since talks broke off.

Last week, however, NBC sent union members a two-page letter that a union official said seemed be an attempt to pressure union negotiators.

The letter was from NBC’s chief labor lawyer, Eugene McGuire, who wrote that union bargainers wouldn’t budge, that “negotiations are deadlocked” and that when this happens, labor law gives an employer the option of “implementing its final offer.”

“Although it is not an option we would prefer, under these circumstances it is one NBC must consider,” McGuire wrote.

NBC considers its offer “fair and balanced” for all sides, the letter added, and “if you feel the same way, let your union representative know. We remain hopeful that we will have a signed agreement.”

“There’s no impasse,” union spokesman John Krieger said Friday. “There are still too many issues to be bargained yet. We’ve told them (NBC) that there’s no impasse. We said that in March.”

Of McGuire’s letter, he said, “I think they just want to woo the membership to put some pressure on our negotiators” to submit NBC’s offer to a vote by the rank and file.

There’s nothing unlawful about the company’s letter, Krieger said, but “it looks like a tactic that’s right out of the GE book.”

He referred to General Electric, the company that bought RCA and subsidiary NBC for $6.4 billion last June. With the voluntary exit last fall of NBC Chairman Grant Tinker, General Electric installed as his successor Robert Wright, one of its top executives.

Neither NBC nor the union has requested or even suggested a return to the bargaining table, officials for each side said Friday.

However, Day Krolick III, NBC vice president for labor relations, said NBC “would be willing to listen to (proposed) minor adjustments in the contract, provided that that would make an agreement.”

But he emphasized that the company will not change the basic version of its March 31 offer: “We don’t want our employees and the public to think we’re ready and willing to change our final offer. We’re not.”

He was asked when NBC would put into effect that offer, should the union-management stalemate continue. There is no target date, Krolick replied, “but I would assume, if (the union) does nothing at all, that it would be a matter of weeks.”

“If they (NBC) do implement that last offer,” said the union’s Krieger, “they’re playing a dangerous game,” one “that could precipitate a strike.”