A US writers’ union is suing the American reality show production company owned by UK television network ITV in a dispute over health insurance.
The Writers Guild of America has a court date for early next year with ITV production company Kirkstall Road alleging the production company scrapped existing health insurance coverage in favor of a plan so poor no one agreed to use it.
Kirkstall Road is one of ITV’s relatively recent US acquisitions as the British television company tries to break into American TV. The company has had a difficult relationship with the WGA. In 2012 it contested its vote to unionize on procedural grounds (the National Labor Relations Board found that the election had been fair) and it has continued to fight the WGA over healthcare.
The company produces true-crime shows The First 48 and After the First 48 for the A&E channel, as well as Sensing Murder for the channel Investigation Discovery.
Lowell Peterson, executive director of the Writers Guilt of America, East, characterized the process of negotiating with ITV as “quite frustrating”.
“We’d spend many weeks negotiating in detail and then it would change,” Peterson said. “At some point ITV just said, ‘Everybody’s gonna get $300 a month,’ and that was fine with us – it was better, frankly.” Then, this last year, after another protracted cycle of negotiations, the company mandated the implementation of another health insurance program that Peterson said was not worth enough for anyone in the company to use it.
“Nobody enrolled in it,” Peterson said. “It doesn’t provide sufficient benefits for the amount of the premium and nobody’s signing up.” The union wants the $300 monthly stipend to be reinstated retroactively, which will exceed $100,000 in total, according to Peterson. Peterson characterized the row as typical of ITV’s attitude toward American unions.
The Guardian contacted the office of Jason Guberman, vice-president of business and legal affairs for ITV America; Guberman’s office referred the call to a spokeswoman for ITV in Los Angeles.
An ITV spokesman responded to that request after publication, saying that the proposed healthcare plan “puts the health of our people in jeopardy”.
“We are confident that we acted lawfully in offering health insurance to our employees and strongly refute the false claims by the WGAE that we have not been bargaining in good faith,” he wrote. “The union is well aware that we have been negotiating the terms of a collective bargaining agreement for a considerable period of time, and we have come to broad agreement on a wide range of topics such as paid time off including holidays and vacation, wage minimums, as well as grievance and arbitration procedures.”
The case is due in court on 16 January 2016.
