COMMENTARY : Writers vs. Producers--Is There a Better Way?

Television and movie fiction--thriving on well-written and well-produced scenes of conflict that are settled through confrontation, high-noon shoot-outs and sudden victories of good guys over bad guys--does not provide the best model for how writers and producers should settle their own differences.

In most real-world conflicts, both sides have legitimate interests. And just as writing and production can be improved by professional attention to process, so can conflict resolution.

To a professional student of the negotiating process, several things come to mind in diagnosing the dispute between Hollywood producers and the Writers Guild of America, whose strike is now in its 19th week.

Symptoms

The are obvious. Everyone involved--writers, producers and the television-viewing public--is being hurt by the strike. Each day, the economic pie to be divided among writers and producers steadily dwindles. Each side keeps hoping that its slice of a smaller pie will somehow be larger than the slice it is now refusing.

If the parties were smart enough, they would be able to settle the matter quickly today on roughly the same terms that they will eventually accept, and divide the joint savings. Why doesn’t that happen? What’s wrong with what they’re doing?

Diagnosis

There are difficulties between the Writers Guild and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers with both the ongoing working relationship and the immediate negotiation process. The kind of negotiating tactics being used during the writers’ strike tends to damage the very capability needed by the parties to settle this strike and to settle future problems without a strike.

Working Relationship: Whether a relationship is for security or trade, business or pleasure, companionship or sex, a small but crucial aspect of every successful relationship is the ability to handle differences. The more serious the differences, the more important it is to be able to deal with them.

A good working relationship depends upon such qualities as understanding, two-way communication, reliability and acceptance. Giving in on some issue is often wise, but doing so will not buy a good working relationship. Those needed qualities must be built up over time.

The Negotiation Process: As writers and producers quarrel over residuals, they understandably focus on substance. How much should writers get? What would happen to foreign sales of U.S. television programs if the latest guild proposal were accepted? Who is right? Who is wrong?

Financial compensation, issues of fairness and the precedent established by an agreement are certainly important. What may be more important, however, is the process by which those issues are to be resolved.

The current negotiation process is positional bargaining. Writers and producers issue statements of what they will or won’t do and argue. It’s essentially a contest of will. Each side hurts the combined enterprise, hoping the other will give in first.

This negotiating process has serious drawbacks:

--The focus is on positions: Arguing about what one will or won’t do diverts attention both from underlying interests and from what one should do. Attention is focused on winning or losing, not on legitimate interests and how to reconcile them.

--Inventing is mixed with deciding: In positional bargaining, the parties move toward agreement--if they do--by making concessions. Each step not only suggests a possible compromise but also amounts to a commitment to it. Mixing brainstorming with commitment is bad for creativity. Imaginative solutions are unlikely to be produced if every suggestion is a commitment, and if the only options are those along a straight line between conflicting demands.

Prescription

A good negotiation process becomes side-by-side problem-solving in which the focus is on meeting interests, generating options and making commitments at the end of the process, not the beginning. It is difficult to change a negotiating process, particularly during a strike, without third-party help. Either side can invite assistance.

The most effective technique for producing agreement between parties with sharply conflicting interests and perceptions is likely to be the “one-text” procedure used at Camp David by Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and President Jimmy Carter to bring together Prime Minister Begin of Israel and President Sadat of Egypt.

In this process, a facilitator prepares a draft framework for an agreement. Successively, the parties--separately or jointly--identify interests that they feel are not adequately provided for in the draft, taking into account legitimate interests of others. The text is repeatedly revised and improved by the facilitator until a proposal is produced that can be recommended to the parties. Unless and until both parties accept that proposal, no one is committed to anything.

The same technique can often quickly produce an interim agreement. In the writers’ strike, for example, an interim agreement might provide for an immediate return to work with a formula for placing a portion of earned revenues in escrow, to be released only upon agreement. Under such a plan, each side would continue to suffer an economic loss pending agreement, but the gains to be divided upon agreement would become steadily larger rather than smaller.