NABET RECOMMENDS REJECTING NBC OFFER

The union for 2,800 striking NBC technicians and news staffers will recommend rejection of the company’s contract and strike settlement offers when the strikers vote on the proposals later this week, a union spokesman said Monday.

John Krieger, an official of the National Assn. of Broadcast Employees and Technicians, said he had been in error Sunday when he said that the union’s six-member negotiating committee would make no recommendation to NABET members on NBC’s proposals.

In fact, he said Monday, five of the committee members had voted to urge the rank-and-file to reject NBC’s offers, with the sixth committee member abstaining. He declined to identify that person.

After talks by telephone Sunday with NBC negotiators, the committee agreed to put the company’s proposals to a membership vote that could end the strike, which began its 16th week on Monday. Voting results are to be announced next Monday.

There has been no change on that agreement, Krieger said.

The union’s summary of NBC’s strike settlement offer and contract proposal is being mailed to members, Krieger said in a telephone interview from Bethesda, Md. The contract would go into effect upon ratification and would expire on March 31, 1990.

A statement accompanying the summary says that “for every member’s sake, we hope you will reject” NBC’s offers, he said. The statement also urges members “to study the proposal and strike settlement and the negative impact it will have on you and your co-workers.”

Among other things, the union committee has objected to NBC proposals for hiring a limited number of by-the-day employees and for originating “remote” broadcasts from any station it chooses.

There are 15 separate contracts in the NBC “master agreement” facing a vote this week. If only one is rejected, the union says, the strike will continue until that dispute is resolved.

The announcement of the NABET vote will come in the same week that negotiators for another major technical union--the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers--are scheduled to hold federally mediated contract talks in Washington with CBS.

Those negotiations are set for Oct. 22-23. IBEW represents 1,500 technicians, including camera operators and videotape editors in both news and sports. Its contract expired on Sept. 30, but the union’s members are continuing to work, pending developments.