WKBN-TV After rejecting offer, union is locked out

WKBN-TV called for worker health-care cost sharing to rise to 26 percent.
By PETER H. MILLIKEN
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
BOARDMAN -- Thirty-five employees of WKBN-TV are off the job after rejecting what management termed its final offer Saturday afternoon.
The union, Local 47 of the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians, a division of the Communications Workers of America, represents news anchors, reporters, directors and photographers.
The union's contract was to expire at midnight Saturday, but workers arriving for shifts beginning in midafternoon Saturday were turned away from the station, said Joe Bell, a union steward and union negotiating team member.
Informational pickets outside the station, where the temperature was 15 degrees Saturday afternoon, carried signs saying they had been locked out. The union was willing to continue working and negotiating past the midnight expiration, Bell said. No new talks are scheduled.
News release
"Management has informed the union that their contract will not be extended. The affected employees will be off the job until a new agreement is reached," WKBN management said in a news release.
"Station operations will continue with management, nonunion and union employees not affected by the expiring contract," the prepared statement said.
"I just can't believe that they would throw these people out in the cold in this type of weather," said Alfred Rossi, union president.
News Director Gary Coursen said that the station, which is owned by Piedmont Communications of Charlotte, N.C., would do as many scheduled newscasts as possible. On weekdays, the station staff normally does seven daily newscasts, including the 10 p.m. news on Fox. Sports Director Robb Schmidt was anchorman for the 6 p.m. broadcast Saturday.
Union's vote
Bell said the union members voted overwhelmingly Saturday against management's three-year offer, which called for no pay raise in the first year and 2-percent pay increases each in the second and third years. Union scale runs from $390 to $670 a week, depending on job classification and years of service, with some air personalities having individual contracts calling for higher pay.
The company offer also called for the employees to immediately increase their co-payments from 7 percent to 26 percent of their health-care premiums. That would increase co-payments from $24 to $74 a month for single coverage and from $56 to $204 for family coverage.
"The members are not exhorbitantly paid right now, and to have to take on the added cost of this ballooning health-care premium -- it wouldn't be worth their while. There were not sufficient wages in the package to make up for the increase in health-care costs," Bell said.
The union had proposed pay increases totaling 8 percent over three years and a gradual increase in health-care copayments to 20 percent of the premium, Bell said.
milliken@vindy.com