CNN has agreed to pay $70 million to settle a 15-year-old labor lawsuit brought by over 200 former CNN camera operators, broadcast engineers, and other technicians.
The group of employees sued the network after it replaced them with non-union workers. The plaintiffs accused the network of cutting them in order to avoid negotiating with their union and violating federal labor laws. CNN held that it was not legally required to work with the union because the workers were contractors through Team Video Services.
The settlement, which was agreed to by both parties, must still be approved by the National Labor Relations Board.
A significant part of the lawsuit hinged on whether CNN could be considered a “joint employer” of contractors that also freelance for other companies. A joint-employer status would grant the workers’ union a much greater legal foundation to negotiate with the network.
Had the case gone before the NLRB under the Bush administration when it was filed, CNN would likely not have been classified as a joint employer. The case appeared in front of the board during the Obama years and the Democrat-led labor panel took a broad view of what constituted a joint-employer. It ruled that CNN met the qualifications.
A three-judge panel later overturned the NLRB’s ruling in 2017.
“It was an extremely lengthy proceeding both in terms of the hearings and the decision,” former Democratic NLRB member Wilma Liebman told Bloomberg Law. “If they didn’t settle at this point, they would have had to go back and litigate a number of factual issues.”
