NABET-NBC Bargaining Mobilizing Keeps Spirits Up, Talks Moving

It’s been 18 long months of bargaining with NBC, but NABET-CWA members are energized, using creative strategies to build support from viewers and make sure that management knows members are determined to gain a fair contract.

In fact, company officials have admitted that ads on NBC’s Facebook page, a mobile billboard and informational picket signs outside the Today Show’s windows are giving the news and sports divisions big headaches.

“Innovative mobilization can be very effective,” new NABET-CWA President Jim Joyce said. “We’re still in talks, but after many months with no movement we are making progress. The ads, along with our members’ willingness to turn out for pickets and rallies, have made a big difference.”

NABET-CWA represents 2,500 technicians, camera operators, newswriters, and other behind-the-scenes employees at the network, and at NBC-owned stations in New York, Washington, Chicago and Los Angeles. Their last contract expired in March 2009, six months after they begin bargaining.

Until January, the major sticking points were seniority issues and NBC’s ongoing transfer of NABET-CWA work to non-union “content producer” jobs, a subject pending before the National Labor Relations Board. "In our evaluation the work itself hasn’t changed, only the job title,” Joyce said.

The debate over content producers continued during four days of negotiations in late February. But because of progress made on some key issues a few weeks earlier, NABET-CWA temporarily halted its Today Show pickets and online ads that in earlier months targeted Sunday Night Football viewers and the Rockefeller Center tree lighting ceremony.

That meant no actions during the Olympics, Joyce said. “We are all professionals and we take pride in our work, and the exceptional job our members did covering the Olympics speaks to that,” he said. “But our members also have families to support, and NBC needs to know that we will continue to fight as long and as hard as we have to for a fair contract.”

Photo Caption: Mobilizing for a fair contract, members of NABET-CWA Local 52031 picket outside the network-owned station in Washington, D.C., during “Meet the Press.” New York members have held similar pickets outside the Today Show.