ABC Lockout

No returning to work for ABC strikers. The 2,200 off-camera employees of ABC who walked off their jobs in a one-day strike over health benefits were not allowed to return to work this morning. The camera operators, couriers and other employees will be locked out until they promise to give ABC warning of future strikes, said company spokeswoman Julie Hoover. "Union workers will not be let back without a guarantee of no unannounced job actions since ours is a perishable product," she said. Members of the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians offered not to strike again on the health issue, a proposal rejected by ABC. "We proposed going back to work and no work stoppages for 30 days so both parties could assess their positions and continue a dialogue," said union press officer Tom Donahue. "ABC's Election Day coverage will suffer dramatically without our skilled workers." ABC officials denied that. "We have been preparing for the possibility of a strike for well over a year and will have our usual excellent election coverage," said ABC spokesman Hoover. "The union is wrong." ABC has used management employees and non-union personnel to fill in, but the walkout still resulted in technical glitches in news programs, a shutdown of two soap operas and a traffic-snarling picket line outside a football stadium. Half of the 2,200 strikers were based in New York, with the rest in Los Angeles, Washington, Chicago and San Francisco. They include camera operators, desk assistants, couriers and a 75-person crew for the football game. The union, which has been without a contract since March 1997, accuses ABC and its parent, the Walt Disney Co., of concealing rates for health care services that Disney wants the union to accept. The union filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board over the summer. "The company is demanding that we accept the plan, but they are not providing us with details on the plan so we can make an informed judgment," said union spokesman Donahue. ABC contends the union wants to see rates the insurers negotiated with doctors, information Disney does not have and could not reveal if it did.