ABC reaches contract agreement with news writers

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The ABC network and the Writers Guild of America East reached a tentative agreement on Thursday for a new contract covering 250 news writers, editors, production assistants and others in New York and Washington.

The deal, reached after three years of negotiations, is subject to a ratification vote next month by the ABC News employees, whose previous contract expired in early 2005, the two sides said.

The new contract would run until 2010. Under terms of the latest agreement, the ABC employees would receive raises of 3.5 percent annually for the life of the contract.

Full-time workers also would receive a $3,700 one-time bonus payment to settle a dispute pending before the National Labor Relations Board, the two sides said.

The announcement comes a week after news writers, producers and editors at ABC rival CBS Corp voted to authorize their union to call a strike after working without a contract for more than two years.

The Writers Guild also is embroiled in the most serious Hollywood labor confrontation in 20 years. Thousands of WGA-represented screenwriters went on strike on November 5 after contract talks with major film and TV studios deadlocked over union demands for a bigger share of revenue from the Internet.

ABC is a division of Walt Disney.

(Reporting by Nichola Groom; Editing by Brian Moss, Gary Hill)