NABET Lockout Ends With New Contract

A TWO-WEEK LOCKOUT of WIVB-TV broadcast engineers has ended with a new contract, a return to work and full pay for time lost by 31 members of NABET-CWA Local 25,

The technicians at the Buffalo, N.Y., CBS affiliate voted on Oct. 9 to accept a new five-year contract providing 6-percent annual raises for workers who earned between $400 and $725 per week and minimum raises of 3 percent or 3.5 percent in each of the five years for workers who earned more than $725. The increases are retroactive to March 27.

"I'm gratified that we were able to resolve this dispute quickly, get everyone back to work and make some improvements in the package," said NABET-CWA President John Clark, who took part in negotiations. Had the situation been allowed to deteriorate further, he added,
"it could have destroyed the station's relationship with the local."

Clark credited the bargaining committee and Local 25 President Roy Schrodt for their persistence, as well as NABET-CWA Staff Representative Paula Olson and NABET-CWA
Region 2 Vice President Freddie Saburro, who also took part in the negotiations.

Local 25 members kept up informational picketing outside the station throughout the lockout and organized significant community support. Meanwhile, NABET-CWA
in-house counsel Matthew Harris pressed unfair labor practice charges against WIBV and its owner, LIN Television of Providence, R.I. Harris said the charges are still pending.

Armed guards left the station last weekend and on Tuesday the locked-out Local 25 members returned to work, reclaiming their jobs from scab replacements. For the first time since the lockout began, union members were allowed to enter the building by the front door - during
the lockout they were required to use a rear entrance monitored by video cameras, where security guards checked photo IDs.

WIVB General Manager and President Lou Verruto told employees the lockout was intended to put economic pressure on the union to accept the station's bargaining
position. He ordered 49 other NABET-CWA members to report for work, even though their 31 co-workers were thrown out of their jobs. The local represents 80 off-camera employees.

Realizing that the company was trying to provoke a strike, Local 25 members stayed on the job but pledged a percentage of their pay to support those locked out. "I never saw 80 people in a unit more solid in my lifetime," Saburro said.

Protesting the lockout, Erie County Executive Dennis Gorski withdrew his political ads from the station. Buffalo Firefighters honked the horns on their trucks as they drove past, and police sounded their sirens. Local restaurants and UPS drivers delivered donated food to the locked out workers.

WBEN News covered developments in the lockout and WBEN
Talk host Sandy Beach devoted a three-hour broadcast to
Channel 4's labor relations disaster - even though the
radio station is a tenant in the WIVB building.