NABET Ratifies ABC Agreement

It's official: The National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians ratified a new four-year contract with ABC.

The heads of the union's bargaining units recommended approval, so the vote was all but a foregone conclusion. All eight units approved the contract, which is effective Saturday.

The contract covers about 1,100 employees, including engineers, news writers, traffic coordinators and publicists at stations in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco, as well as staffers at the ABC network in New York and Washington, D.C.

The two sides reached a tentative accord Dec. 7 after months of sometimes-contentious talks and nontalks. The old contract expired March 31.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.