NBC, MSNBC praised unions prior to allegations they illegally fired NewsGuild members
Employees of NBC and MSNBC on February 9 held a walkout and claimed some were illegally terminated.
NBC management doesn’t "practice what they preach," according to a NewsGuild member who is frustrated that rank-and-file digital staffers from NBC News and MSNBC continue to work without a deal.
A NewsGuild source told Fox News Digital that NBC management told the union late Tuesday afternoon that its next availability to meet is March 1, meaning rank-and-file staffers will go at least two more weeks without an agreement.
Last week, the ugly labor issues hit a boiling point when over 200 employees from NBC News and MSNBC walked off the job in response to recent layoffs that NewsGuild leaders insist broke the law. Staffers, and their recently laid-off former colleagues, chanted and marched outside Rockefeller Center along with Scabby the inflatable rat mocking NBC executives as "criminals."
During the rally, New York City comptroller Brad Lander, D., specifically called out MSNBC, NBC's left-leaning cable arm, for mistreating rank-and-file staffers.
"You can’t have the MSNBC brand be one that’s about progressives and then screw your workers," Lander told the crowd.
Over 200 employees from NBC News and MSNBC walked off the job last week in response to recent layoffs that NewsGuild leaders insist was illegal. (Fox News)
While NBC New fancies itself as a straight-news organization, MSNBC is stridently progressive and hosts such as Joy Reid, Chris Hayes and Mehdi Hasan have praised labor unions.
Alexander Kacala, a former "Today" employee and current NewsGuild member who attended the rally outside the company’s New York City headquarters last week, feels NBC is just as hypocritical as MSNBC.
"The way NBC treats its employees is widely different from the values it seemingly upholds to the public, and this is especially seen with its resistance to honor its relationship with the NewsGuild," Kacala told Fox News Digital.
The NewsGuild believes NBC management illegally terminated union journalists and has failed to negotiate in good faith. However, NBC management has insisted the guild is misrepresenting the facts and wants to work toward an agreement.
Kacala, who is not one of the staffers who was laid off and was actually fired in November, said labor issues aren’t the only examples of hypocrisy from NBC News honchos.
LESTER HOLT, RACHEL MADDOW AND OTHER NBC NEWS, MSNBC STARS ABSENT FROM RANK-AND-FILE WALKOUT
"The ‘Today’ Show specifically creates an environment very different from that which an audience would expect from this iconic lifestyle brand. Stories of mental health and other issues greatly populate the ecosystem there, but these stories stop when cameras are turned off or after stories are published," Kacala continued. "I experienced numerous egregious things that informed my experience there from 2019 to 2022."
Kacala hopes that he’ll be able to share more about his firing from NBC in the future, but in the meantime, he’s rooting for the NewsGuild to make progress with management.
"They do not practice what they preach," he said.
The unionized workers feuding with management are largely from digital components of NBC News, MSNBC and "Today." Most of them rarely interact with high-paid, liberal hosts such as Hayes and Reid.
A 2021 Pew Research Center survey found roughly 74% of Democrats say unions have a positive impact on America, as opposed to 34% of Republicans.
"Liberal Democrats are especially likely to see labor unions in a positive light," Pew wrote.
NewsGuild president Jon Schleuss, who insists "NBC is breaking the law" by laying off unionized employees amid bargaining, feels the Pew study and a recent Gallup poll that showed 71% of Americans approve of labor unions indicate MSNBC viewers would side with the Guild.
"With the vast majority of Americans supporting unions, it means that an overwhelming majority of MSNBC’s viewers support Guild workers across the network. NBC executives should be wary of upsetting their viewers by fighting their workers," Schleuss told Fox News Digital.
NBC News didn't respond to a request for comment.
"We are disappointed by the NewsGuild’s continued attempts to misrepresent the facts while we work in good faith with them to reach an agreement," an NBC News spokesperson told Fox News Digital prior to last week’s rally.
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Fox News' Joseph A. Wulfsohn contributed to this report.