Union on Strike at NBC Threatens Wider Walkout

The union representing 2,800 striking NBC employees threatened Monday to extend its walkout to the other television networks.

Production of the ABC television series “General Hospital” was delayed for several hours Monday when ABC employees refused to cross a picket line set up by the National Assn. of Broadcast Employees and Technicians (NABET).

Later in the day, NABET officials accused KCBS-TV of assisting strike-bound KNBC-TV and threatened to extend union picket lines to CBS facilities nationwide.

NABET is striking NBC and the NBC-owned stations, including KNBC, over job security issues.

The latest strike skirmishing began before dawn Monday when NABET pickets encircled the Sunset-Gower Studio in Hollywood where both NBC and ABC film soap operas. About a dozen sympathetic ABC employees, who also belong to NABET but who are not on strike, refused to cross the picket line and reported to work late on the set of “General Hospital.”

Taping eventually got under way about 10 a.m., an ABC spokesman said, after all sides agreed that NBC employees would only use two designated entrances. Employees of other networks will use separate entrances, avoiding the picket lines.

Spokesmen for both ABC and CBS denied aiding NBC during the 8-day-old strike, and NBC spokesman Jay Rodriguez said that all of NBC’s work is being handled by its own management or non-striking members of the network’s work force.

“There is nobody in town doing strike work in conjunction with NBC,” Rodriguez said.

But Carrie Biggs-Adams, NABET Local 53 president, disagreed, adding that further NABET actions might be leveled against CBS and ABC.

“I’m simply putting them (CBS and ABC) on notice that NBC needs to be isolated and (that) we will do everything possible to show them that we mean it,” Biggs-Adams said.

NABET’s threat to picket CBS arose from an incident last week when a KCBS news crew acted as a “pool” camera crew in a Los Angeles Municipal Court arraignment of a woman whose pit bull allegedly attacked an animal control officer. In a standing arrangement, television news organizations often agree to share film if access to a news event is limited.

But because KCBS cooperated with KNBC’s news department in granting Channel 4 access to the arraignment tape, NABET threatened to picket CBS.

KCBS spokeswoman Andi Sporkin labeled as “absurd” Biggs-Adams’ charge that Channels 2 and 4 might be cooperating.

“The last time KNBC, KABC and KCBS cooperated in this town was on a touch football game about a hundred years ago,” she said. “The last thing we want to see is KNBC get through this strike unscathed, which they clearly aren’t. All you’ve got to do is look at their newscasts.”

KNBC’s newscasts have been plagued with audio, visual and technical troubles since the walkout began June 29.

Biggs-Adams also called a noon press conference Monday to announce NABET’s opposition to a court order that requires federal officials to hold press conferences open to all television news reporters, regardless of whether their employees are on strike.

Federal Judge Dickran Tevrizian issued the temporary restraining order Thursday after U.S. Atty. Robert Bonner forced a nonunion KNBC news crew to leave a press conference.

However, Biggs-Adams postponed the press conference one day when KNBC reporter David Garcia and a nonunion KNBC news crew showed up.