Union Seeks Telemundo Contract

Union leaders pressuring NBC to extend contract coverage to TV anchors and reporters who work for Telemundo, NBC’s recently acquired Spanish-language network, will take their campaign to Los Angeles City Hall today.

The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists has demanded the right to organize 36 on-air employees of the two Telemundo stations in Los Angeles, KVEA-TV Channel 52 and KWHY-TV Channel 22, since NBC completed its $2.7-billion acquisition of Telemundo in April.

The union alleges that NBC, which is owned by General Electric Co., has rebuffed its efforts.

The network instead has endorsed a two-tiered system of discrimination, the union charges, in which on-air Telemundo reporters and anchors receive substantially lower salaries and benefits than their counterparts at KNBC-TV Channel 4.

AFTRA represents all of KNBC’s nearly 30 on-air employees, and the union is asking that its contract with NBC automatically be extended to include Telemundo journalists.

“NBC should do the right thing,” said Leslie Simon, director of AFTRA’s Spanish-language media project to organize workers at Spanish-language TV and radio stations. “NBC has said the Latino community is very important, so they should lead by example and increase the standards in the Latino labor market. This is a hypocritical stance that NBC is taking.”

Los Angeles City Council members are expected to vote today on a resolution calling on NBC to provide “its Spanish-language employees with the same quality of benefits, working conditions and representation as its English-language employees.”

NBC executives deny that the network is discriminating. Not all on-air workers at NBC-owned stations belong to the union, a network official said Thursday night.

“NBC respects the right of all of its employees to make their own decisions about union representation, and we do not interfere in that process,” an NBC statement said. Network officials said AFTRA has failed to follow the normal process of petitioning the National Labor Relations Board for an election to see whether employees want to be represented by the union.

“We believe employee rights are best protected when such decisions are made under the auspices of the National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency charged with overseeing union representation matters,” the NBC statement said.

AFTRA’s Simon said NBC should automatically extend union coverage and union-scale wages to Telemundo workers without federal oversight.

Although the union hasn’t performed any comparison studies, Simon said anecdotal evidence suggests that KNBC personalities’ compensation is “significantly more than 30%” higher than that of their counterparts at KVEA and KWHY.

AFTRA has refused to petition the federal labor board because of the union’s contentious history with Telemundo executives, Simon said. She alleged that after AFTRA tried to organize KVEA in 1995 and 1996, six Telemundo workers interested in joining the union were fired.

Telemundo Chief Executive James McNamara could not be reached Thursday.

AFTRA also has enlisted the support of Chicago-area political leaders to pressure NBC to allow AFTRA to organize Chicago’s Telemundo station.

In Los Angeles, the only Spanish-language station workers covered by AFTRA are at Univision Communications Inc.’s KMEX-TV Channel 34, the city’s largest Spanish-language station.