NEW YORK CITY AND LOS ANGELES  - CBS News employees who are members of the Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE) and Writers Guild of America, West (WGAW) will vote to authorize a strike against CBS.  The vote will take place on Thursday, November 15, 2007. The WGA-CBS Negotiating Committee unanimously recommended this action, which the WGAE Council and WGAW Board authorized, because CBS has been unwilling to negotiate an acceptable contract for WGA-CBS members.

WGA-CBS members have been working under an expired contract since April 2, 2005 and without pay raises since April 2004. In November 2006, the WGA-CBS membership voted an overwhelming 99% to reject CBS’s contract offer. The two sides met again on January 8, 2007, but CBS refused to put forth any new proposals, insisting on the offer which membership rejected. CBS continues to demand membership accept that offer.

 “For too long, CBS has taken the crowning legacy of Edward R. Murrow and his colleagues and cheapened it, increasingly turning the broadcast news medium into the mere ‘lights and wires in a box’ Murrow feared. Part of that diminution of news quality is reflected in the network’s refusal to offer our dedicated, knowledgeable, hard-working members a fair and respectful contract,” said Michael Winship, president of the Writers Guild of America, East. “We expect those members to use their strike authorization to tell management that the nearly three years they have gone without a contract is unconscionable, short-sighted and destructive.”

“For CBS to make these newswriters work for over three years without so much as a cost of living raise is disgraceful,” said Patric M. Verrone, president of the Writers Guild of America, West. “CBS newswriters take this step knowing that their fellow writers in TV and film stand behind them.”

Voting will take place in person or by proxy at meetings in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington, D.C. on Thursday and Friday, November 15 and 16, 2007.  The New York meeting will be held on Thursday, November 15th at the WGAE offices, 555 West 57 Street, New York City, at 7:00 pm. The Los Angeles meeting will be held on Thursday, November 15th at the WGAW offices, 7000 West 3rd Street, Los Angeles, at 7:00 pm.  The locations of the Chicago and Washington, D.C. meetings will be determined soon.

Key elements of the CBS contract rejected by the membership are:

• A two-tier wage package – television and network radio members in one tier and local radio members in another – with no retroactive pay.
• The right to assign current WGA responsibilities to non-WGA employees.
• The ability to merge or combine Guild shops with non-Guild units, and in doing so potentially force the Guild out of those shops. Stations affected may include WCBS-AM 880 and 1010 WINS in New York, and KNX and KFWB in Los Angeles.

The WGA-CBS national agreement covers newswriters, editors, desk assistants, production assistants, graphic artists, promotion writers, and researchers in New York, Washington, D.C., Chicago and Los Angeles working in television and radio on the national and local levels. More than 500 WGA-CBS employees are covered under this contract, which expired on April 1, 2005.

The Writers Guild of America, East and the Writers Guild of America, West are labor unions representing writers in motion pictures, broadcast, cable, news and new media. The WGAE and WGAW are active in legislative activities on the state, federal, and international levels with a special focus on globalization, labor, communications, and copyrights. They also conduct a number of programs, seminars, and events on issues of interest to, and on behalf of writers.