WHUT-TV Workers Ratify New Contract After 18-Month Battle
Wednesday, November 20, 2013(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)
NABET-CWA
Local
31’s four-person bargaining unit voted last week to ratify a new contract at
WHUT-TV. The settlement came after the NLRB advised the union in late September
that they were going to issue a complaint supporting their Unfair Labor
Practice charge “over the surface bargaining that has been part of the
difficult bargaining going back to the spring of 2012,” said CWA’s Carrie
Biggs-Adams. The agreement capped mobilization efforts by NABET-CWA Local 31,
allies from Occupy Labor, Jobs with Justice, and the Metro Washington Council
that began in the summer of 2012. “The effort to roll back wages to 1990s
levels was beaten back,” says Biggs-Adams, “as was the effort to allow
management to pick wage levels with no union input”. Instead, basic
wages
will remain at the old rate, and workers will receive a 3% raise on July 1,
2014, and beginning July 1, 2015, employees will be eligible for up to 3% per
year based upon their performance evaluations. Subcontracting and
jurisdictional changes were kept close to the old contract language. “We look
forward to rebuilding the unit going forward,” said Biggs-Adams. Local 31
President Rich McDermott participated along with Local 31 Counsel Keith Bolek
in the process to wrap up the negotiations and the NLRB charges.
photo:
9/29 action;
photo by Adam Wright