Every few years, the contract expires between the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. The former represents those who write TV shows and movies. The latter is the group that represents the major studios. The AMPTP makes deals with the talent unions of Hollywood and then the smaller studios abide by the same terms. Each contract is usually for three years, sometimes four. Sometimes, when a contract is nearing expiration, a union will make what is called a "quick and dirty" or "fast track" deal. This means that both sides agree not to open up major areas of the contract to negotiation. They just bump up the pay scales to reflect cost-of-living increases, and perhaps adjust a few minor points…then, the contract is extended for three more years.
But sometimes one or both sides feel it's appropriate to conduct a full negotiation and open up the entire contract to modification. They prepare overreaching wish lists of what they want to get from the other side, and weeks are spent arguing over these points…or not. Sometimes, the WGA walks into bargaining sessions with many items they wish to discuss and the AMPTP negotiators simply refuse to discuss them. Sometimes, the AMPTP guys have a list of changes they want in the contract and their position is, "This is the deal, take it or leave it." Sometimes, it all leads to a strike. I've been a member of the WGA since 1977 and I've been on strike, I think, four times. Maybe five. Another would seem to be looming ahead of us when the present contract expires on May 1.
WGA strikes are like few other strikes in the pantheon of Labor Relations. The WGA represents a pretty wide range of income levels and career satisfaction. You have members who make thousands of dollars a day and who are successful beyond their wildest imaginations. You also have members who have sold very little (or at least, very little lately) and who are either bitter or terribly afraid. Oddly enough, some of the most militant members can be found on both ends of the financial spectrum. Some of the hard-line members who want to crush Management in each negotiation are among the Guild's most affluent members and some are the ones who barely make a living by writing. The converse is also true. In any case, the wide disparity of incomes and egos leads to a certain instability. Every so often, the WGA erupts in enough infighting to render itself pretty ineffectual at the bargaining table.
At times, so does the AMPTP. It is, after all, made up of ostensible competitors who are allied for the common good. When they function that way, they're an awesome, powerful force that has been known to batter a union into near-oblivion. But the common good for Disney is sometimes at odds with the common good for Paramount, and there are also some tremendous feuds and personality conflicts between certain studio heads. The inner-squabblings of the AMPTP are kept within the organization, but it is widely believed that some of the longer Hollywood strikes have occurred, not because a union couldn't agree with the Producers but because the Producers couldn't agree with one another. Most of their decisions are not subject to simple majority rule; the vote among the studios has to be unanimous. So if all the studios but one want to give the union a better offer, that one holdout can add weeks or months to an impasse.
I don't know what's going on within the AMPTP at the moment but the WGA is certainly looking like a Banana Republic…and I don't mean the clothing stores. Our President, a lady named Victoria Riskin, was recently forced to resign. Riskin won a resounding victory in the last election but a movement erupted on behalf of the losing candidate, Eric Hughes. It charged, apparently with some accuracy, that Riskin did not meet eligibility requirements to remain a Current Member and therefore was not eligible for the office to which she had been elected.
She recently resigned and her post was promptly assumed by Charles Holland, who had been Vice-President. Holland is an energetic, colorful gent who has claimed among other fascinating life experiences that he attended college on a football scholarship and later worked as an intelligence officer in an elite Army Special Forces unit. A group that is demanding that Eric Hughes be installed as WGA President is now charging that these and other Holland claims are blatant lies. This has been alleged in the L.A. Times and elsewhere. An open letter to Holland is being circulated, mostly via e-mail, that says in effect, "Do the honorable thing and resign your office or we will expose more of your lies and shame you out of the business." At the same time, these folks are demanding to know which WGA staff members might have tried to protect Riskin and/or Holland by covering up their respective problems. We will shortly see calls for major resignations and firings at the Guild office.
I have no idea who's in the right on all this. In fact, I tend to think no one is, and that it's a horrible thing to have happen just as we are about to enter into what already promised to be a contentious contract negotiation. The AMPTP clearly wants to roll back the already meager share that writers receive when their work is sold on DVD…and it isn't just us. Hollywood operates under a concept called "pattern bargaining," which acknowledges that the three main unions (Directors, Actors and Writers) will remain at a rough parity. If one gets something, the other two get it. This applies to losses, as well. The producers feel that if one union can be forced to accept a rollback, that cut can then be imposed on the other unions. Since actors consume a lot more of the budget of a project than writers, it further multiplies the numbers and things play out something like this: If the WGA takes a $10,000,000 cut then the Directors Guild will have to accept the same $10,000,000 cut and when the same principle is applied to the Screen Actors Guild, it becomes more like a $40,000,000 cut for them. If the cut can be extended to other unions, it can multiply even further.
What's going on in the WGA with the leadership coming unglued is no secret. I've told you nothing here that hasn't made it into Variety. So the AMPTP must be figuring this would be a dandy time to stick it to the WGA. Back in 1985, they thought we were in disarray and they were right. The result was maybe the worst deal in Hollywood history. Before that, we had a terrific deal for the then-blossoming fields of home video and cable programming. The producers demanded a major cut and the Guild ruptured into two factions. One wanted to fight for the old terms, even if it meant a strike. The other felt that a strike of any length would be too devastating to them so we should just accept the rollback and go on. (Many of the latter expressed the viewpoint that there would never be a viable industry in things like HBO or video cassettes. By the way, the leader of the anti-strike forces was Lionel Chetwynd, who recently produced that TV movie that portrayed George W. Bush as a macho hero on 9/11.)
The Guild fractured and our leaders began attacking one another, so the whole thing collapsed. I think to this day, the WGA is in denial about what a rotten deal we wound up accepting. Three years later, we had a long strike that I believe was an extra price we paid for our '85 collapse. The AMPTP assumed they were dealing with the same weak union and offered us another package of rollbacks. Thanks to better leadership, we refused and held together…though it took 22 weeks for the members of the AMPTP to agree among themselves on a more reasonable offer.
It's way too easy to imagine a rerun with one of two endings, both bad: They see our present chaos, offer us another rotten deal (with an eye towards then forcing it on other unions) and we either fold quickly, as per '85. Either that or we're forced into a long strike that hurts everyone, including innocent bystanders, as became sadly necessary in '88.
Boy, do I hope I'm wrong.