Two dozen WTTW technicians have ended their three-week strike after agreeing to a new four-year labor contract Thursday afternoon with the Chicago public TV station.
The employees, all members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1220, walked off the job and onto the picket line March 16 after previously failing to reach an agreement, the first such strike in the 67-year-history of WTTW-Ch. 11. The agreement, which runs through July 2025, includes full-time staff hiring guarantees as well as “fair economic gains” in salary, the union said Thursday.
“It’s not a great contract, but it’s fair,” said John Rizzo, business manager for Downers Grove-based IBEW Local 1220. “We’re pleased to get back to work. We’re looking forward to the future and hopefully, rebuilding some of the trust that was lost during this difficult time.”
The striking IBEW workers included camera operators, graphic artists and floor crew responsible for various productions at WTTW, such as “Chicago Tonight,” the station’s signature nightly news program. WTTW continued to produce a shorter version of the show during the strike, with executive producer Jay Smith and other management personnel handling the technical aspects of the live 7 p.m. broadcast.
The IBEW technicians, who have been working at WTTW since it went on the air in 1955, will be back behind the scenes on Friday.
“The terms of our new contract, effective today, embrace change and new ways of working, are critical to our collective and continued success, will protect and create jobs, and are finally in line with the contracts of other media companies across the city and the country,” WTTW said in an emailed statement.
The technicians had been working without a labor contract since July, when a one-year extension of the previous four-year agreement expired. The issues were job protection and work jurisdiction, according to the union, which alleged WTTW was trying to farm out their long-standing technical duties to news producers and nonunion personnel.
WTTW previously offered the union a no-layoff guarantee and a bargaining unit minimum of 25 full-time employees for the term of the new contract, but said the IBEW rejected it.
Rizzo said the new agreement protects the size of the bargaining unit, with WTTW committing to hiring five union technicians during the course of the new agreement. At the same time, Rizzo expects to lose more than five members through retirement over the same period.
The contentious strike not only disrupted programming, but also drew significant attention from politicians, a frequent focus and source of guests for “Chicago Tonight.” Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot appeared at a union rally in front of the station’s North Side studios, while Gov. J.B. Pritzker issued a statement in support of the striking workers, setting a top-down tone for discouraging candidates to appear on the station during the strike.
On March 28, the station told the striking workers it was discontinuing their group health insurance coverage as of April 1, giving them the option to continue coverage — at their own expense — through the federal COBRA program.
WTTW said the terms of the health insurance policy mandated employees not working the minimum number of hours shift to COBRA.
“Because of the short duration of the period when IBEW employees were not working the minimum number of hours, these employees will be immediately eligible for health insurance coverage and other benefits upon return to work and will be reimbursed for any COBRA payments made,” the station said Thursday.
The station said the average pay rate across the unit before the new contract was $47.75 per hour, and that 91% of technicians made more than $40 an hour. While the technicians gained an undisclosed pay raise in the new agreement, Rizzo said the 23 days without pay during the strike will take years for the workers to make up.
“What they gained doesn’t make up for the money they’ve lost over the last three weeks,” Rizzo said.
The last Chicago broadcast technicians strike was in November 1998, when hundreds of members of the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians at the ABC television network, including those at WLS-Ch. 7 in Chicago, walked off the job for 11 weeks.
The IBEW has had labor disputes in the past, but has mostly avoided strikes. A notable exception occurred in 1972, when IBEW workers went on strike for eight weeks against CBS-owned radio and TV stations in markets across the U.S., including Chicago. The major disagreement in that strike was also over jurisdiction and concerns about job losses by union members.
In addition to WTTW, IBEW Local 1220 represents employees at a number of Chicago TV and radio stations including WBBM-Ch. 2, WBBM-AM 780, WCIU-Ch. 26, sports talk station WSCR-AM 670, WGN-Ch. 9 and national cable channel NewsNation, among others.