Writers Guild’s Confrontational Approach Getting Mixed Reviews

Network executives were finishing bagels and fruit at New York’s Waldorf Astoria Hotel when Susan Baronoff and her colleagues abruptly rewrote the script.

As Cable News Network anchor Anderson Cooper was moderating a panel of breakfast speakers, Baronoff and a dozen other members of the Writers Guild of America fanned out across the ballroom to hand out blue fliers criticizing the pay and benefits of scribes working in reality TV. A writer for NBC’s “Starting Over,” Baronoff then jumped to the stage.

“Will you please today think about it,” Baronoff said, “and do what you know is the right thing to do?”

The incident last month at what was supposed to be a polite discussion of broadcasting left the network executives and Waldorf audience startled. Which is precisely what David Young had in mind when he planned it. A 47-year-old veteran union organizer and former Teamsters official, Young aims to shake up the writer-studio relationship in Hollywood through similar public confrontations.

“You have to start moving people out of their comfort zone,” Young said.

In the three months since he was named interim executive director of the Writers Guild, West, Young has adopted the kind of disruptive tactics traditionally used by blue-collar unions. In September, writers staged a protest outside Advertising Age’s “Madison and Vine” conference in New York that included protesters dressed as reality TV stars Donald Trump and Martha Stewart.

Twenty guild members later crashed a panel of reality TV producers at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills, handing out leaflets and briefly engaging panelists in discussions about poor working conditions and pay in the reality genre. Writers also leafleted the Museum of Television & Radio in New York to protest what they believe is excessive product placement in TV.

Although Young’s tactics have succeeded in getting publicity, they garner mixed reviews within the 9,500-member union. Supporters believe they draw attention to the guild’s gripes and help galvanize members. But critics see them as pointless gimmicks inappropriate for writers.

“We’re not Teamsters, we’re not textile workers,” said former board member Larry Gelbart, a veteran writer whose credits include the TV series “MASH” and such movies as “Tootsie” and “Neighbors.” “The last thing we want is to be turned away at the door because someone is afraid we’re going to make a scene.”

Former board member Tim O’Donnell, whose credits include the TV series “Dave’s World,” said Young’s tactics might work sometimes, but they also risk backfiring.

“The idea that humiliating people who you are going to be sitting down in negotiations with, and that somehow that would give us a better deal, doesn’t make sense to me,” O’Donnell said.

But writer Baronoff noted that the Waldorf protest at least succeeded in getting a response from one of the breakfast panelists, Fox Entertainment President Peter Liguori, who was quoted afterward that writers’ complaints need to be heard.

“We want industrywide change and we can’t seem to get anyone’s attention,” Baronoff said.

Young took over on an interim basis when John McLean, a former CBS executive, was fired by guild directors amid criticism that he was too close to the industry.

The move came shortly after President Patric M. Verrone and his supporters swept control of the guild’s board, vowing to step up organizing efforts in such areas as reality TV, animation and basic cable while taking a harder line in studio negotiations.

Labor activism ebbs and flows within the Writers Guild, which staged five strikes in the last 50 years, most recently in 1988. Now, both actors and writers have renewed their stridency to the point where studios are already preparing contingency plans for a possible strike about two years before the first contract expires.

Verrone traces the activism that Young is spearheading to meager gains in previous contracts that justify new strategies for pressing the union’s demands and gaining leverage with studios. Writers and actors are seeking a bigger cut of DVD sales. They also are concerned that they may not get their fair share of proceeds should the growth in shows viewed on cellphones, the Internet and portable devices such as iPods take off.

“We felt we really hadn’t been in the game a long time and that we needed to do things that get the attention of our bargaining partners,” Verrone said.

Producers and network executives would not comment on the protests, nor would Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers President J. Nicholas Counter, who serves as the chief labor negotiator for the studios.

Young learned what he called “blood and guts unionism” over two decades during which he organized construction and garment workers while presiding over a series of strikes.

As the national director of organizing for Unite, the strongest union in the garment industry, he led a high-profile campaign against jeans maker Guess Inc. in Los Angeles. A onetime plumber, the Pasadena native also served as a statewide labor organizer for carpenters.

Since he joined the guild in 1999, Young has earned a reputation as a reserved, skilled tactician who carefully picks a battle.

“He doesn’t get into a fight unless he feels he’s got a shot,” Verrone said. “He’s very strategically minded.”

Young said the reality TV protests would continue as long as networks and producers refused to meet to discuss the issue with guild officials, who gathered signatures of more than 1,000 reality writers, producers and editors seeking union representation. Young also has been applying pressure through lawsuits alleging that writers worked under sweatshop-like conditions, which their employers deny.

Young said he knew his tactics wouldn’t produce instant results. Instead, he hopes to wear down the networks and studios.

“It’s not a death blow,” he acknowledged. “It’s pain inflicted through a thousand small cuts.”

Young and the WGA also are threatening to petition the Federal Communications Commission to crack down on the growing use of product placement unless producers develop an acceptable code of conduct and compensate writers when they are forced to showcase products in scripts.

Then there’s productinvasion.com. Aided by Young’s staff, a group of writers from such programs as “The Simpsons” “Mad TV” and “The Tonight Show” spent months creating the site, which lampoons the ways producers weave products into shows including “The Swan” and “The Apprentice.”

Young promises further lawsuits and lobbying of major media investors such as state pension funds sympathetic to the union’s agenda.

“This is just the beginning,” he said.