NABET Members Stage Nationwide NBC Strike

The first major strike against the nation’s top-rated network in more than a decade began on schedule at 9:01 p.m. PDT on Sunday, just as NBC implemented a new contract that the union has refused to ratify for more than two months.

About 500 technicians, news writers and other members of the National Assn. of Broadcast Employees and Technicians manned picket lines around NBC facilities from Burbank to Manhattan in protest over network-imposed provisions in the new two-year pact.

NBC programming was not immediately affected, and some live or taped shows, such as “The Tonight Show” and “Late Night With David Letterman,” go into reruns beginning today.

Nevertheless, union spokesmen were as certain of their predictions that management would soon weary of handling behind-the-camera chores as NBC officials were certain that union members would see the wisdom of returning to work.

The largest number of pickets--about 300--ringed NBC headquarters at New York’s Rockefeller Center shortly after midnight. Another 100 pickets gathered outside NBC studios in Burbank.

The walkout followed last-minute talks called by federal mediator Timothy Germany in New York. For more than two hours Sunday afternoon, negotiators for both sides met separately at the federal Mediation and Conciliation Service offices. But neither side gave in.

The strike follows six months of unsuccessful negotiations and the unilateral imposition of a new contract by the network. The old pact expired March 31.

NBC has about 8,000 employees and NABET--which represents 2,800 NBC camera operators, writers, sound engineers, videotape editors and other behind-the-camera employees--is the network’s largest labor union.

In all, the walkout affects NBC facilities in eight cities, including eight radio stations and five TV stations.

The largest concentration of NABET members--about 1,000--work out of network headquarters at Rockefeller Center in New York. About 700 members of NBC’s Burbank work force are NABET members and 200 of them work for KNBC-TV Channel 4, the network-owned local station. KNBC signed off its 5 p.m. Sunday newscast with the song “Happy Trails to You” playing over videotape of NABET picketers from an earlier job action.

The last time NABET struck the network was in 1976 in a work stoppage that lasted seven weeks. In 1983, management and union negotiators again reached an impasse when the contract expired. Instead of striking, NABET employees worked without a contract for 19 months until reaching a new four-year accord.

NBC’s vice president for labor relations, Day Krolik III, reiterated the point NBC negotiators hammered home during a month of talks in San Diego, just before expiration of the old pact: The 252-page contract offered to NABET on April 2 is the final offer.

NABET officials in New York said that Krolik’s promise to implement the new contract at midnight on Sunday would trigger the strike.

The new two-year contract calls for average pay hikes of $30 per week in the first year and $40 per week in 1988. But for the skilled technicians that NABET represents, money has not been the major issue. Under the old contract they often earned annual salaries in excess of $50,000.

The chief issue dividing the two sides has been job security. NBC is demanding the right to hire temporary non-union employees to fill NABET positions in the event of sickness, absenteeism or increased workload. The network wants to be able to hire up to 4% of its total work force with such employees in the first year of the contract and up to 6% in the second year.

NABET’s leadership initially complained that such a policy would inevitably erode the union’s strength and endanger its members’ job security. Later, the union negotiating committee offered to concede the temporary employee issue in exchange for a four-day work week, but NBC’s Krolik said “no.”

NBC officials say the hard-line negotiating stance taken by the network results in part from renewed emphasis on cost-effectiveness following NBC’s takeover by General Electric in June, 1986.

CBS, ABC and NBC all underwent management shifts last year as a result of mergers or stock buyouts. The new managers of the three major networks have systematically cut expenses and trimmed hundreds of jobs.