Broadcasting & Cable
News Divisions May Join Entertainment Brethren on Picket Line By Marisa Guthrie -- Broadcasting & Cable, 11/10/2007 12:00:00 PM While thousands of drama and comedy writers hit the picket lines in New York and Los Angeles this past week, 500 employees at CBS News represented by the Writers Guild of America East were preparing to take a strike vote of their own.
News writers for CBS News TV and radio operations in New York, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles have been working without a contract since April 2005. Members overwhelmingly rejected the company’s contract proposal in November 2006.
On Thursday, Guild employees will vote on whether to authorize a strike, and WGA leadership predicted a landslide on that ballot, as well. An affirmative strike vote doesn’t mean that CBS News employees will strike -- only that they authorize their leadership to call a strike.
"The news [programming] would be substantially diminished," said Ann Toback, assistant executive director of the WGA East.
"These are skills that many [WGA members] have honed over years and years,” she added. “I do believe that in some instances, it might be very difficult for the company to get anything on the air."
A labor stoppage on the news side could not come at a worse time for CBS, which, like ABC and NBC, will rely increasingly on its news division to fill schedule holes left by the WGA work stoppage on the entertainment side.
There is also a showdown brewing at ABC News, where the WGA represents about 200 people at ABC’s local and national bureaus in New York and Washington. WGA members at ABC News also have been working without a contract since 2005.
ABC News is also in the midst of contentious talks with the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians/Communications Workers of America (NABET/CWA), which represents 2,500 ABC/Disney employees across the country including camera operators and video editors........
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