WGA, SAG-AFTRA File Labor Grid Dawst against NBCUniversal – The Hollywood Reporter

Writers Guild striking protesters march down the NBCUniversal corridor along Lankersheim Blvd. on June 6th.

Gary Boom

The Writers Guild, after 11 weeks of striking against the Motion Picture and Television Producers Alliance over stalled contract negotiations, has filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board against NBCUniversal, Hollywood Reporter to learn.

The union alleges that the company violated its freedom to picket – and endangered its members – by immediately blocking the public sidewalk adjacent to the studio during an ongoing construction project. The move comes days after SAG-AFTRA, the significantly larger actors’ union, announced its own strike against AMPTP over its contract as well as accompanying protests at the studios. SAG filed a reverse action with the agency as well.

According to a complaint the WGA filed with the federal agency on July 18, this has “enforced[ed] Picket riders patrol busy streets with heavy vehicular traffic where two picketers have already been hit by a vehicle and refused to provide K-rail barriers to create crosswalks for pedestrians to use after the Los Angeles Police Department advised their employer weeks ago in the interest of public safety to do so.” The WGA alleges that NBCUniversal “interfered with, coerced, and restrained employees in the exercise of their rights” — in short, “unlawful conduct.”

NBCUniversal had not responded by press time.

in early june, Hollywood Reporter Explore the growing tensions between union members and the studio over the issue, which affects protesters and walkers alike. Several local public entities have been involved, including the LAPD’s Labor Relations Unit as well as the offices of several elected officials. The sidewalk is a municipal enforcement challenge. (One official said THR That area is “jurisdiction hell.”).

NBCUniversal’s WGA activity was generating upwards of several hundred visitors a day at the time. In its own filing, the SAG noted that members were forced to “sit-in in an unsafe crowded location, exacerbating the appalling public safety situation to interfere with the right of striking members to engage in the protected and coordinated activity of picketing and patrolling outside their employer’s premises during a lawful strike.” “.

NLRB filings focus on the NBCUniversal pier along Lankershim Blvd. They came after a July 17 social media outcry about trimming shade trees—amid the sweltering summer heat—outside another section of the studio’s vast campus, along Parham Avenue.