THRUST-AND-PARRY: NABET ASKS VOTE ON NBC PROPOSAL

Chief negotiators for a major union on strike against NBC will be asked to put to a membership vote a proposed NBC contract that the negotiators had rejected, union officials said Monday.

But the officials, from the Chicago and Burbank locals of the National Assn. of Broadcast Employees and Technicians, emphasized that the request does not signal union divisiveness in the NBC strike, now in its sixth week.

Rather, they said, they feel that if there is a vote on NBC’s proposals, the company’s contract will be roundly rejected, thus signaling to the company that it is time to start negotiating again.

NABET officials, armed with strike authorization from the membership, called the union’s 2,800 members at NBC off the job on June 29, a day after NBC implemented a two-year contract that union negotiators had rejected.

Those negotiators had refused to put the proposal up for a membership vote on grounds that it simply was not worth it.

NBC officials, as part of the thrust-and-parry going on between the two sides since the walkout, have noted that NABET’s rank-and-file never got to vote on the company’s contract.

“I wish,” NBC President Robert C. Wright said in a July 23 letter to the strikers, “the union leadership had seen fit to go over the company’s proposal with its membership and allow it (the membership) to vote before calling for a strike.”

The requests that such vote now be taken--the requests will be considered Wednesday by union negotiators--were approved Friday at membership meetings at NABET Local 41 in Chicago and Local 53 in Burbank.

In two Local 53 meetings, spokesman Chuck Klein said, there was majority approval by voice vote of a motion requesting the union’s leaders to put NBC’s contract up for a national vote.

Should that happen, he said, he felt that NBC’s proposal would be rejected. He cited a “straw poll” vote on the contract taken during Friday’s meetings.

With a total of 334 voting, he said, a solid majority rejected the pact--253 against it, 80 for it, with one abstention.

In the Chicago meeting, there was a vote only on whether to ask that NBC’s contract be put before the national membership.

Ninety-two union members wanted the request made of NABET’s leadership, 61 were against it, and three abstained from voting, said Richard Beidel, a spokesman for the union’s Chicago local.

After that, there was approval of a motion to make the request unanimous, added Beidel. He said he wasn’t in favor of asking that NBC’s contract be put to a national vote, but “I will do what I’ve been instructed to.”

“It’s an unusual motion in that many people felt this would show (union) solidarity,” he said. “I think the majority of the people, if it (NBC’s contract offer) is brought back to them, will reject it.”

What those seeking a contract vote want, he added, is “to try and get the company off the dime. In other words, take the thing back to the membership, have it rejected, and then the company will know that we’re serious.”

Klein expressed a similar comment: “They figure that this is what NBC needs to get moving again.”

Tom Kennedy, a spokesman for the union leadership, was noncommittal on the two locals’ request for a national vote on the NBC contract.

Members of NABET’s negotiating committee in New York, Burbank, Chicago and Washington are scheduled to have a conference call on Wednesday, he said. At that time “they will have to make that decision” on a contract vote, he said.

Major issues in the strike include NBC’s proposals on temporary hires and a dispute on a so-called “successor clause”--with NBC refusing to continue any NABET contract at any NBC-owned facility that the company later sells.

There have been occasional rumors that GE, which acquired NBC last year for $6.3 billion, plans to sell all or parts of its television division. But NBC officials have emphatically denied those rumors.

The company last month said it was selling the NBC radio network and two other radio operations it owns to Westwood One for $50 million, subject to approval by the boards of both companies and federal regulatory agencies.

About 700 management, supervisory and other NBC personnel have been filling in for the strikers since the walkout began. The union’s last NBC strike, in 1976, lasted seven weeks.