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.

The union said the main obstacle to a settlement was removed when the National Labor Relations Board recently ruled in favor of a WGA challenge of network efforts to exclude about eight writer-producers in New York from union representation.

"Once that demand came off the table, we were able to get to the agreement," spokeswoman Sherry Goldman said.

Full-time workers also would receive a $3,700 one-time bonus payment, which ABC, a unit of the Walt Disney Co., said was "in specific consideration of the parties' settlement of the NLRB charges."

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.

(Reporting by Steve Gorman; Editing by Brian Moss, Gary Hill)
© Copyright 2007 Reuters.