The Hollywood Reporter
The Writers Guild, now 11 weeks into its strike against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers over stalled contract negotiations, has filed a grievance with the National Labor Relations Board against NBCUniversal, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.
The union claims the corporation is infringing its freedom to picket — and endangering its members — by obstructing the public sidewalk immediately abutting the studio during an ongoing construction project. The move comes days after SAG-AFTRA, the exponentially larger actors’ union, announced its own strike against the AMPTP over its own contract as well as accompanying protests at studios. SAG filed a mirrored action with the agency as well.
According to a complaint the WGA filed with the federal agency on July 18, this has “forc[ed] picketers to patrol in busy streets with significant car traffic where two picketers have already been struck by a car and by refusing to provide K-rail barriers to establish pedestrian walkways for picketers to use after Los Angeles Police Department advised the employer weeks ago in the interest of public safety to do so.” The WGA contends NBCUniversal has “interfered with, coerced, and restrained employees in the exercise of their rights” — in short, “illegal conduct.”
NBCUniversal didn’t respond by press time.
In early June, The Hollywood Reporter explored rising tensions between guild members and the studio over the issue, which affects protestors as well as pedestrians. Several local public entities had become involved, including the LAPD’s Labor Relations Unit as well as the offices of multiple elected officials. The sidewalk is a municipal enforcement challenge. (One official told THR that the area is “jurisdiction hell.”)
The WGA’s activity at NBCUniversal had generated upwards of several hundred marching daily visitors at the time. In its own filing, SAG noted that members have been forced “to picket at the unsafe crowded location, exacerbating the dire public safety situation to interfere with striking members’ right to engage in the protected, concerted activity of picketing and patrolling outside the employer’s premises during a lawful strike.”
The NLRB filings are focused on the NBCUniversal sidewalk along Lankershim Blvd. They follow social media outcry on July 17 about the pruning of shade trees — amid the severe summer heat wave — outside another section of the studio’s vast campus, along Barham Blvd.
Source: Hollywood Reporter
