Studios Plan Non-Union Script Use : Collapse of Talks May Forge a Test of Writer Loyalty

Mediated talks between the striking Writers Guild of America and Hollywood producers collapsed early Saturday, pointing toward an intensified battle for the loyalty of writers as studios try to make television shows and movies without union scripts in coming weeks.

Floyd Wood, a district director with the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, adjourned the talks at 1:10 a.m. Saturday after an 11-hour session, both sides said.

Representatives of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers said the mediation effort was over. “The talks have ended. If anyone wants to resume, there’s no one home,” said Sidney Sheinberg, president of MCA Inc. and co-chairman of the alliance’s committee of core companies.

Keeping in Touch

Guild leaders nonetheless said they expect further contact with Wood. “(The federal mediator) has indicated he will be in touch with the parties,” guild chief negotiator Brian Walton said.

The writers’ strike is entering its 22nd week, and has become one of Hollywood’s longest industrywide labor disputes. The principal issue is disagreement over residuals, or payments to writers for shows sold into syndication.

The strike has virtually shut down production of television programs, forced postponement of the coming television season, triggered layoffs at studios and had an economically depressing ripple effect on other businesses dependent on film production.

With their declaration that the negotiations have ended, producers apparently will press ahead with plans to refilm old television scripts with new casts, import writers from foreign countries and buy programs from overseas. Networks also will lean more heavily on news programming, which is not affected by the strike.

Guild Dissidents

Saturday’s break-off also puts heightened pressure on a vocal group of 21 guild dissidents who are unhappy with the union’s position in negotiations. They have predicted that some writers would resign active status in the union and return to work with a breakdown of talks.

The dissidents earlier postponed a July 28 return-to-work deadline because of the mediation effort. A spokesman for the group said it expects to meet Monday to decide whether members will go through with their return-to-work threat.

As many as 550 writers have attended meetings sponsored by the group and 933 voted in favor of accepting a recent contract offer from producers (2,789 voted against). But it remained far from clear Saturday how many guild members would really cross a picket line.

Several sources--ranging from agents to writers to producers and studio executives--have made widely varying estimates of the possible erosion of guild members.

Nonetheless, Saturday’s events put each side’s position into perspective. The producers need to lure writers back to work to achieve anything close to full production. The guild wants to preserve solidarity to force a return to the bargaining table.

On Friday, one studio chief, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the producers’ strategy going into the talks would be to get an agreement by this weekend, or to “kill all hope” in the mediation process so that writers who were contemplating a return to work would not hold back in anticipation of a settlement.

In order to salvage any programs for the already-delayed fall TV season, producers must begin making shows in the next two weeks. So far, however, there is little evidence that a significant number of guild members have broken ranks to begin work on the new season.

To some extent, the companies are moving to fill the network schedules with “ad hoc” programming. For instance, Paramount is producing 13 episodes of “Mission Impossible” for ABC, filming in Australia and using scripts written when the program was first made in the United States in the 1960s and ‘70s. CBS and NBC have said they would order similar shows based on old scripts, or resort to other sorts of “writer-proof” programs, such as news shows and foreign programming.

British Writers Hired

Lorimar-Telepictures, using another ploy, last week hired British writers for some of its TV programs, a company executive said. Lorimar produces such shows as “Falcon Crest” and “Knots Landing.”

Although mediator Wood earlier in the week said “both sides have tried very hard to bargain,” it was apparent Saturday that the latest round of talks, which began a week ago, only increased frustration without leading to measurable progress.

For example, Walton, in an interview Saturday, accused producers of being intransigent and added: “One possible hypothesis (is) that there’s an attempt here to break the guild.”

He added that he had heard unconfirmed reports of stepped up efforts to recruit writers, including offers of indemnification against guild lawsuits or disciplinary proceedings.

Sheinberg denied any intention of breaking the union, which in addition to bargaining, runs a complex administrative apparatus that oversees residual payments and screen credit disputes for writers.

But as an example of the producers’ increased aggressiveness, they have stepped up attacks on the union leadership. At a meeting with writers on the Walt Disney Pictures lot last week, for instance, Disney production chief Jeffrey Katzenberg asserted that Walton had “humiliated and embarrassed” would-be peacemakers by accepting proposed management concessions while refusing to budge in his own demands.

New Proposals

Much of the talk in these sessions centered on a new plan--which involved proposals from both sides--that would have linked foreign and domestic TV residuals in an attempt to break a long-standing bargaining impasse.

Under a version of the proposal that producers say they are prepared to accept, the companies would have raised foreign residual payments on one-hour TV shows in exchange for the guild’s agreement to a softened domestic residuals schedule. The producers want to change the residuals formula because syndication sales of reruns of one-hour programs have fallen off in recent years.

The companies say they would pay writers at least the existing foreign residual, which is about $4,200 per hour show. But they would add an additional 1.2% of their gross foreign receipts on such programs, but only after the shows made at least $400,000 in the domestic rerun market. The new payments would stop at 25% above the existing current foreign residual.

Guild negotiators, according to several sources, were the first to propose the new structure. But they insisted that the new residual be pegged at 1.8% of receipts, and producers refused to budge from the 1.2% figure.

In a last-ditch proposal drafted by Walton on Friday night, the writers proposed a five-year-contract that would have included an increase in pay plus a cost-of-living adjustment in the final year of the contract. The companies balked at the cost-of-living proposal.

In the sessions, the companies also offered an agreement covering shows made for basic-cable networks such as USA Network and the Arts and Entertainment Network. But Walton said the offer had many unresolved points, and was not sufficient to end the strike. Such shows are currently covered under guild contracts only on a case-by-case basis.

On Saturday, the producers’ alliance continued contract talks with Teamsters Local 399, which represents about 2,300 transportation and other workers at the studios. The Teamsters contract expires Monday night.

Earlier in the week, Earl Bush, secretary-treasure of Local 399, said talks with the producers had made “good progress.”