DIRECTORS GUILD members at the three major...

DIRECTORS GUILD members at the three major television networks, who have been working without a contract since June 30, will be voting by mail on proposed new pacts in the coming weeks.

Union negotiators had reached a tentative agreement with NBC on a new three-year contract covering staff directors in July, but they balked at the contracts proposed by CBS and ABC. The national board of the Directors Guild of America is mailing out ballots without recommendation.

Staff directors at each network will vote only on their own network offers and results should be known by mid-October, said Max Schindler, head of the guild’s network negotiations committee. The ballots empower the board to call a strike.

Meanwhile, on another labor front, a spokesman for the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service said negotiators from NBC and a major union on strike since June 29 would resume bargaining today in Washington.

The network and the National Assn. of Broadcast Employees and Technicians previously said their federally mediated talks would resume on Wednesday. The union’s 2,800 members at NBC were called out on strike after the company put into effect a two-year contract that NABET had rejected. Union and NBC officials had bargained for eight days last month, but the talks were recessed on Sept. 1 by a federal mediator for lack of progress.