The Writers Guild of America (WGA) announced yesterday that in a strike vote among CBS employees represented by the union, ninety-eighty percent of the workers voted to give the WGA negotiating team the power to call a strike after a contract extension expires at midnight tonight. The current contract between CBS and the WGA was to have expired on April 1, but the two sides agreed to extend the terms of the contract until Friday as negotiators continued to bargain over remaining areas of disagreement. CBS's demands for reductions in benefits, permission to use non-union writers, and a clause that would allow the media giant to withdraw from the contract if it underwent a merger, are among the remaining obstacles preventing an agreement according to the union.
See "WRITERS GUILD: CBS labor dispute may end in strike", Reuters, Chicago Tribune, April 4, 2002