NBC, NABET TO RESUME TALKS

Negotiators for NBC and the striking National Assn. of Broadcast Employees and Technicians said Friday that they have agreed to hold new talks Wednesday, their first since Sept. 8, when contract negotiations resumed and collapsed on the same day.

The new bargaining session, as in previous ones that began in the summer, will be held in Washington under the auspices of a federal mediator.

NABET’s strike against NBC, now in its 14th week, involves 2,800 technicians and off-camera news personnel. It began when NBC implemented a two-year contract that the union’s negotiators previously had rejected.

The new talks come as some union members are pressuring NABET’s negotiating committee to put to a membership vote the contract proposals that NBC made in August.

The negotiators discussed the matter Wednesday in a regularly scheduled conference call but took no action. They will discuss it again Tuesday when they meet in Washington before resuming talks with NBC the next day, said Carrie Biggs-Adams, president of NABET Local 53 in Burbank.

Meanwhile, about 250 NBC strikers and supporters turned out Thursday for a solidarity rally in Burbank. Union officials said that attendance would have been higher had there not been an earthquake that morning.