PRODUCERS GET BENEFITS PACKAGE

The board of directors of the Producers Guild of America, has voted unanimously to recommend to its members that they implement a non-binding offer from the Assn. of Motion Picture and Television Producers that will provide producers with health, welfare and pension benefits but not recognize them as a union.

The PGA has been seeking bargaining power with film management for years and with promised support from Teamsters Local 399 had threatened last August to strike the industry.

PGA Executive Director Charles FitzSimons called AMPTP offer “a giant step for the PGA.”

“It’s not the race,” he said. “We still want to be recognized and we’re not going to give that up. But this is a very important beginning.”

In a recent “letter of practices” addressed to PGA President Renee Valente, the Assn. of Motion Picture and Television Producers said it would provide benefits to “bona fide” producers and associate producers and allow PGA members to use the guild designation behind their names on screen credits. The AMPTP said it and would participate in regular meetings to resolve producer-related problems.

The carefully worded three-page letter, from AMPTP President J. Nicholas Counter III, however, made it clear that management was not recognizing the PGA as a collective bargaining unit and that the elements of the letter were not legally binding.

At the same time that FitzSimons was calling the AMPTP offer a victory, he acknowledged that the PGA board voted to accept it because it was clear that management was prepared for a long, drawn-out strike.

“This is a very bad time for labor,” FitzSimons said. “It’s bad for any group negotiating today, whether it’s producers, actors, writers or anybody. There’s an obstinacy to labor that is rife in the land today.”

The PGA board recommendation, which is expected to be passed without much dissent, will be voted on at a general membership meeting Thursday.

The AMPTP would not discuss its reasons for resisting recognition of the PGA as a union, but management has resisted all efforts to share in the burgeoning cable, pay-TV and videocassette markets. PGA officers have said in the past that those markets are high on its agenda once the PGA is recognized as a bargaining unit.

Management’s official attitude has been that producers are members of management themselves and thus exempt from union membership.

Universal and Paramount studios both had agreements with the PGA briefly during the mid-’70s, but did not renew those contracts when it became clear that other studios and TV networks were not falling into that line.

The letter of practices is not binding on either side. The AMPTP plan will cover all qualified producers and associate producers (those definitions are among the problems to be resolved by the joint committee) and not just members of the PGA.