DGA, NETWORKS: 1 DOWN, 2 TO GO

Max Schindler is a director in Washington for NBC’s “Today” show. He didn’t go to work Tuesday. But other NBC staff directors did, thanks to successful haggling of which he was a part here.

With 30 minutes to go before a scheduled 6 a.m. (EDT) strike against NBC, his Directors Guild of America negotiating team reached a tentative contract with NBC covering the network’s staff directors, associate directors and others.

“I’m really tired, feel like I’ve been run over by a tank,” he wryly observed. Among other things, the tentative three-year pact with NBC provides for a 3% pay raise each year. The guild’s old contract expired June 30.

Although the new settlement averted both a strike against NBC and a threatened lockout of CBS’ guild members, the weary Schindler noted that contracts still remain to be worked out with ABC, then CBS.

CBS may prove the tougher to deal with, said Alan Gordon, the guild’s eastern executive secretary: “ABC tends to have the same kinds of problems (raised in negotiations) as NBC.”

Gordon and Schindler, the latter chairman of the guild’s negotiating committee for staff directors, spoke shortly after NBC and the guild reached agreement following an all-night bargaining session at guild offices here.

A similar accord was reached 3 1/2 hours later between the guild and TV and motion picture producers in Los Angeles. (See story in Part 1 and accompanying article.)

Although the settlements essentially prevented the first strike in the guild’s 51-year history, some members of another major union that struck NBC on June 29 were unhappy at the outcome of the guild staff contract talks here.

“I’m disappointed--I’d hoped they would come out with us,” said one striking member of the National Assn. of Broadcast Employees and Technicians (NABET) as he picketed outside NBC’s Rockefeller Center headquarters here early Tuesday. (On Monday, about 100 Directors Guild members, in a show of solidarity with those already on strike, held a rally alongside the NABET picketers at one NBC building entrance.)

The NABET striker’s remarks were echoed by Arthur Kent, head of that union’s Local 53, which with 1,350 NBC employees is the largest segment of the union’s 2,800-member walkout against the network and five TV stations that NBC owns.

A strike by the 250 guild members that the DGA says work at NBC or its TV stations would have doubly hurt NBC. The company says 700 of its management and non-union employes are filling in for those already on picket lines.

“The deal they (the guild) got was obviously because they had a certain amount of leverage with NABET being out,” said Kent. “That’s a fact.”

His union represents technicians, camera operators and videotape editors at NBC, as well as 350 news producers and writers. On Monday, with a federal mediator present, NABET negotiators here are scheduled to hold their first meeting with NBC since the strike began.

Speaking of the tentative Directors Guild agreement with NBC, “my first reaction is yes, I’m disappointed” that that union didn’t join NABET on the strike line, Kent said. “But I would have to wait and see what they negotiated.

“If they managed to get themselves a good deal, well, they did what they thought was good for them. But if they didn’t get a good deal, they’ll be on the chopping block the next time.”

“I’m glad that a strike was averted, what can I say?,” said Day Krolick III, NBC vice president for labor relations, when asked for comment on the new pact with the guild.

“I’m glad we were able to make a deal. It was under very extraordinary and difficult circumstances.”

“It was really hard and it was tough,” the guild’s Schindler said of the all-night bargaining. Alluding to the NABET strike, he said he didn’t think NBC wanted another walkout, “not especially at this time, and they did the best they could within reason.

“I guess we got as much as we could from them without them saying, ‘Go ahead and strike.’ ”

Seniority and jurisdiction had been the major issues in negotiations. The NBC agreement still must be ratified by guild members eligible to vote on it.

However, Schindler said, “we’ll probably wait until we negotiate with the other two networks, so that all of our membership can vote on the final package.

“But at this point, all that has been averted is a strike at NBC. Whether or not that would happen at ABC . . . who knows? But we’ll still have to pursue ABC, and after we finish with ABC we’ll pursue CBS.”

No decision has been made on when the ABC talks will be held, he said.

Storms clouds still remain on that front. Prior to Tuesday’s NBC settlement, CBS, noting that the guild was threatening to strike only NBC, called that “unprecedented in tri-network negotiations. . . . “

In a Monday memo to guild-represented staff members, CBS/Broadcast Group President Gene F. Jankowski said that his network “cannot allow one company to be singled out for a strike.”

And, he told CBS’ guild staffers, if their union “does commence a strike against NBC (or ABC), you will not be permitted to come to work until this action is over.”

A CBS spokesman, asked if Jankowski’s lockout threat will be carried out if there is a guild strike against ABC, said no decision about that has been made.