NABET/CWA and Supporters Rally in Kansas City at Monday Night Football Broadcast: Protest Lock-Out b

Kansas City, Missouri (November 16, 1998). The Communications Workers of America (CWA) on behalf of its National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians (NABET) Sector, will hold a protest and rally at 4:30 P.M. to 5:30 P.M. today at Arrowhead Stadium at Gate #1 (I-70- and Blue Ridge). The protest and rally is in support of the CWA- NABET Technicians and Cameramen who have been working without a contract since March of 1997, and were locked out by ABC/Disney since November 3, 1998.

During recent negotiations, ABC/Disney proposed the Disney Signature Health Plan, which would take away major benefits our members and their families enjoy under the current contract. After ABC/Disney's persistent refusal to provide important information about its take-away proposal, Union members protested on November 2, 1998, with a 24-hour unfair labor practice strike. Rather than provide the information needed by CWA, ABC/Disney retaliated quickly and brutally, by locking out striking employees when they attempted to return to work.

According to John J. Sweeney, President, American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), " Management wants to do even more than destroy health care benefits in these negotiations, they propose to reduce its pension contributions for employees to 1/3 the current rate...triple the number of part-time employees while reducing their benefits as well." President Sweeney further stated that "ABC likes to portray itself as pro-family, but Management's attacks against CWA-NABET brothers and sisters is an attack against working families everywhere that we cannot and will not tolerate."

John Clark, President of NABET, in a statement to the Board of Directors meeting in Kansas City in February of this year, told stockholders that "They should question sharply a management that demands the right to cut health benefits." Clark stated that "A company that can afford a $9 billion contract with the NFL, a $140 million severance package with Michael Ovitz, and a $100 million settlement with Jeffrey Katzenberg, certainly could afford $392 a month for the health coverage promised to members like Connie Sims, an 18-year veteran, as an ABC graphics operator in Washington, D.C."

NABET represents 10,000 workers in the broadcast and entertainment industry, 2,700 of them with ABC/Disney. NABET is a Sector of CWA, which has 650,000 plus members in the telecommunications industry.

-End-