LABOR MATTERS
Picket Fences
Writers Walk, Then Talk
compiled by Jeff Burman
 Jeffrey Burman |
At press time, the Writers Guild of America (WGA) was still in talks with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, representing the studios and the networks. While the outcome of the strike is anyone’s guess, its fundamentals still beg to be discussed.
The IATSE has opposed the WGA’s confrontational stance from the start, preferring a quiet diplomacy that has avoided work stoppages for decades. IA president Tom Short reminded IATSE members of their contractual obligations during the strike.
“While the IATSE remains hopeful that a new agreement can be reached between the WGA and the Employers. [The IATSE's] 50,000 members in two countries engaged in motion picture and television production [may experience] a profound and long-lasting impact [from a work stoppage],” Short says in the letter.
“The IATSE contracts contain provisions that require us to continue to honor our contracts,” he continues. “These 'no strike' provisions require the IATSE to notify our members of their obligation to honor these contracts and continue working. Any individual member who chooses to honor any picket line is subject to permanent replacement.”
 Screenwriters walk a picket line outside Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank after contract talks between the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers failed November 5, 2007. Photo by David McNew/Getty Images |
Further, a poll by Frank Magid Associates, published in Variety asked 999 Variety subscribers about the Writers Strike. Of the seven percent of respondents who were IATSE members, the majority (55 percent to 38 percent) believed the strike was not necessary at this time, and assigned blame for layoffs more or less evenly to the producers and the writers (producers 37 percent, writers 32 percent).
The Studios Say There’s Not Enough Money
Hollywood studios lost $1.9 billion on the movies they released in 2006, according
to Global Media Intelligence, reports Adam Dawtrey in Variety.
The study says production costs for mid- to big-budget movies have risen faster than revenues over the past few years, leaving the studios’ business model in the red. Analyzing the 132 films distributed by US majors in 2006, it estimates a pre-tax operating loss of $1.9 billion after five years of distribution across all global media. That compares with a profit of $2.2 billion for all new studio releases in 2004.
Drawing on the same research, an article by Michael Cieply in The International Herald Tribune adds that much of Hollywood’s income goes to its biggest players in the form of participation deals. These deals are a share in gross revenue––not the profit––of films. Major studios may give as much as 25 percent of a film's receipts under such deals.
But Who Counts the Money?
These arguments are offered despite a record-breaking $4.3 billion summer
box office, up 11 percent from 2006, and assumes that Hollywood’s accounting
practices are reliable.
“Surely, the position of the studios wasn't enhanced…by the ruling of a US magistrate against New Line [a division of Time Warner],” writes Variety editor-in-chief Peter Bart. “Judge Stephen J. Hillman found that New Line had either destroyed or failed to supply documents demanded by [Peter] Jackson relating to the profits of his Lord of the Rings trilogy, which has sold $3 billion in tickets.
“This charge of stonewalling wasn't exactly reassuring to the Writers Guild, which had just been told to adopt a ‘trust-me’ attitude toward studio bookkeeping,” Bart continues. “Under the management proposal, the revenue stream would not be divided until the studios reached a certain break-even point––self-defined.”
“It is a watershed moment for the television and motion picture industry,” writes Peter Tolan in The Los Angeles Times, “one in which a new technology will allow them to eliminate a substantial portion of their operating costs. Five years from now, when TV and movie theatres are phased out and replaced by the Internet, these big media conglomerates––if they stick to their guns and force the guilds to sign a bad contract––will no longer have to pay writers, actors or directors anything except whatever front-end money they see fit.”
The Writers Guild Does Its Math
“In areas like streaming video, despite the fact that it earns studios
and networks significant advertising revenue, we get exactly nothing, because
they claim its use is simply promotional,” writes Michael Winship, president
of the Writers Guild, east. “According to writer Greg Daniels, executive
producer of The Office, the show ‘has received seven million
downloads. It generates the most traffic at NBC.com. We received a daytime
Emmy for webisodes that no one was paid for.’
“By way of comparison, for the first three quarters of 2007, NBC Universal earned $2.2 billion, five percent more than the profit it recorded in the same period a year ago,” Winship continues. “Over the same period, the overall profit of its parent company, General Electric, expanded nine percent. GE's revenues in the third quarter alone were $42.5 billion.
“The package we're asking for––from all the studios, from all the networks, from all the massive, global media conglomerates that own them––is less than $200 million…over a period of three years,” he concludes.
On Another Picket Line
Meanwhile, for three weeks in November, the IATSE’s Local One,
representing stage technicians, struck 31 Broadway theatres represented
by the League of American Theaters and Producers. The strike, the
first in the union’s 121-year history, resulted in an historic
compromise, writes Campbell Robertson in The New York Times. Local
One agreed to a reduction in the daily minimum of stagehands on the
load-in to 17. In return for these changes and others, Local One members
would receive annual raises well above the 3.5 percent the league
had offered earlier. The contract was ratified December 9.
In other IATSE-related news, the IA and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) in October formed a Strategic Alliance Committee to look at areas of common interest, including organizing and new media.
 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton receives the endorsement of AFSCME November 1. Photo by Doug Mills/New York Times |
IATSE, AFSCME Endorse Hillary Clinton
Democratic presidential hopeful Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton received
the endorsement of the IATSE in December and the American Federation
of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) in October.
IATSE president Tom Short made the announcement, saying, “Hillary Clinton’s
ability to create real change for America’s working families is exactly
what this country needs. She has the strength and experience to provide quality,
affordable health care for every American and rebuild our middle class.”
Earlier, Clinton was endorsed by AFSCME, one of the nation’s largest
and most politically active labor unions, which has 1.4 million members. “We
looked for the candidate who will fight for working families and who has the
greatest ability to win,” said Gerald McEntee, the union’s president.
His union has 30,000 members in Iowa, making it a significant force in the
Democratic caucuses there in January. McEntee, who is also chairman of the
AFL-CIO’s political committee, said his union planned to spend $60 million
on get-out-the-vote efforts and issue education, second only to the spending
planned by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), writes Steven
Greenhouse in The New York Times.
In September, the SEIU’s national board, representing nearly 1.9 million workers, voted to leave it up to state councils to decide whom to back, writes Christine Hauser in The New York Times. In late October, union leaders said state councils in Iowa, California, Idaho, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Ohio, Oregon, Washington and West Virginia––which represent half of the union’s membership––had endorsed former Senator John Edwards.
FCC Tries to ‘Relax’ Media Ownership Rules, Again
Are the major media outlets already too powerful and unresponsive? Shifting
from issues of fair pay to independent content, Hollywood talent guilds filed
comments with the Federal Communica-tions Commission over whether media consolidation
restrictions should be “relaxed,” writes William Triplett in Variety.
The guilds argue that increasing media consolidation limits diverse and independent programming opportunities and asked the FCC to put a rule in place requiring that “25 precent of network primetime broadcast programming must be supplied by a truly independent source.”
Filing as a group were the Directors Guild of America; the Screen Actors Guild; the Producers Guild of America; the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists; the Caucus for Television Producers, Writers and Directors; the Writers Guild of America, west; and the Writers Guild of America, east.
A similar effort by FreePress.org, the Graphic Communications Conference/ Teamsters and the Newspaper Guild/ Communications Workers of America, demanded that FCC commissioners reduce the conglomerates’ power by limiting their combined control of newspapers, television, cable firms and other information providers. Without such limits, they contend, democracy suffers, writes Mark Gruenberg for the International Labor Communications Association.
“Once upon a time, the Federal Communications Commission…was a sleepy bureaucracy on a quiet street in Washington,” writes Bill Moyers in PBS’ Bill Moyers Journal. “The FCC is the government body that sets the rules for media. And for a decade now, it has become a citadel of power, swarming with media tycoons, high-priced lawyers and well-placed lobbyists, finagling to make sure the rules and regulations are shaped and bent to allow big media to get even bigger. A handful of mega-media corporations have gained unprecedented control over radio, television, publishing and the Internet. They determine what music you hear, what stories get covered, whose opinions get expressed.
“Until five years ago, people like you…didn't matter very much at the FCC,” continues Moyers. “Then, when the FCC Chairman Michael Powell announced that the commission was about to change the rules and allow a few media giants to own even more television and radio stations in one town, you said enough's enough. And somewhere between two or three million of you spoke up and deluged the FCC and Congress with phone calls, e-mails, letters, and postcards.
“Now, a new chairman of the FCC, Kevin Martin, is pushing all over again to reward the Rupert Murdochs, the Time Warners, the Viacoms, the General Electrics and other conglomerates with what they want,” he concludes.
New Revelations Emerge about Clinton Strategist Mark Penn
“Pollster-strategist Mark Penn, head honcho at PR giant Burson-Marsteller,
and perhaps the most important figure in Hillary Clinton's campaign, poses
a real dilemma for the candidate,” writes Katrina vanden Heuvel in The
Nation. “Penn heads a firm that has represented everyone from union-busters
to big tobacco and more recently, Blackwater.
“It would seem difficult to find a more controversial client than Blackwater, but Penn's firm has just been retained by Spin Master,” vanden Heuvel continues. “It turns out that Spin Master distributes Aqua Dots, a toy that was recalled [in November] because it contains a glue ingredient that, when ingested, is broken down by the body to make GHB, the ‘date rape’ drug, which can cause unconsciousness and even death.”
Jeff Burman represents Sound Editors on the Guild's Board of Directors. He can be reached at jeffrey.burman@nbcuni.com.