Labor & Employment Law

Lion Television Writers, Producers Join Writers Guild, East

By James Parks

Some 100 writers, producers, associate producers and researchers at Lion Television voted this week to join the Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE). This is the third victory for WGAE in its recently launched effort to help workers in nonfiction TV programming form a union. These new union members produce shows such as ?Cash Cab? for Discovery Network, ?Megadrive? for MTV and ?History Detectives? and ?America Revealed? for PBS.

The workers voted for WGAE despite a long, aggressive anti-union campaign by the company. Employees said they wanted to become union members to gain benefits like health care, pension, improved compensation and reasonable working hours.

WGAE President Michael Winship said:

Our union has long represented non-fiction writers at PBS, one of Lion Television?s biggest clients. As a writer for public television myself, I know how valuable Guild membership has been for my colleagues and me. Among other great personal and professional benefits, it can be the difference between having health insurance and pension contributions or being out there entirely on your own.

WGAE recently won the majority of votes in NLRB elections held at two nonfiction TV production companies, Atlas Media Corp. and ITV Studios.  

WGAE Executive Director Lowell Peterson said:

The employees have joined their colleagues at other companies and have voted to be represented by the Writers Guild. We look forward to working with them to improve their conditions and we welcome them into our creative community. We hope Lion will respect their decision and will begin productive negotiations with us as soon as possible.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on January 28, 2011 (boomark / email).