Universal under fire for pruning trees during Hollywood strike

The topic gained buzz on social media when comedian Chris Stephens went to twitter to share a picture of the trees with their shady branches trimmed.

“A quick thank you to the good folks at @UniversalPics who pruned the trees shaded our picket to over 90 degrees just a week ago,” he wrote.

LA City Manager Kenneth Mejia intervened to find out if this was an authorized measure.

“Trees are vital to providing significant environmental and public health benefits to Angelenos, especially during a heatwave,” he said wrote on Twitter.

An NBCUniversal spokesman in a statement to CNNHe said the measures were not malicious.

“We understand that the safety pruning of the ficus trees that we are doing on Barham Blvd. carried out resulted in unintended challenges for the protesters, that was not our intention,” the spokesman said. “Working with licensed arborists, we have been pruning these trees annually at this time of year to ensure the canopy is light ahead of the high wind season.”

However, Mejia said these trees are managed by the city, not Universal, and that they should be pruned every five years instead of annually, as the spokesman claimed.

“Working with the Bureau of Street Services, we discovered that no felling permits have been issued for this location outside of Universal Studios in the past three years,” Mejia added a twitter update. “Furthermore, the city has not issued tree felling permits for the recent tree felling work.”

Mejia has released an update on how things will go next.

“The City of LA’s Urban Forestry Division (UFD) will coordinate with StreetsLA’s Investigation & Enforcement Division (IED) to confirm whether this case merits the issuance of a subpoena or hearing,” he said wrote. “Upon issuance, the administrative citation fee starts at $250.”

SAG-AFTRA and the WGA filed unfair labor practices charges against NBCUniversal with the National Labor Relations Board.

“SAG-AFTRA appreciates these efforts to ensure our members have a safe place to exercise their federal rights and join pickets to demand a fair deal,” said a union spokesman CNN Wednesday. “Suspiciously timed construction work that has left pickets on the streets without proper safety rails, and now tree trimmings that avoid shade during a record heatwave, have forced SAG-AFTRA to determine that it was unsafe for its members to picket at NBCUniversal.”

While NBCUniversal told CNN, “We firmly believe the company has met our legal obligations under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) and we will cooperate with any inquiries from the National Labor Relations Board on the subject.”

“While we understand the timeline of our multi-year construction project has presented challenges for protesters, we continue to work with public authorities to improve access. We support the right of unions to demonstrate safely.”

Temperatures are forecast to hit the 90s in Los Angeles this week, which could lead to picket exhaustion.

Studio executives reportedly told Deadline earlier this month that their plan with the WGA strike is “to drag things out until union members start losing their apartments and their homes.”