Anger Fuels Hollywood Drivers’ Strike

For all the allure of the open highway, nothing quite equaled a job driving a truck for Hollywood. It promised something different, something seductive.

Ray Weddle first felt the pull 14 years ago. In the years since, he has moved film sets to and from location, chauffeured studio executives and their families and kept the more-pampered stars stocked with imported teas and coffees.

And he was paid handsomely. In 1985, Weddle made $60,000 in wages and overtime. Current wages range from $16 to $20 per hour, depending on the type of vehicle driven.

But since 1985, Weddle, 46, has spent more and more of his time at home. He and other drivers belonging to Teamsters Local 399--which went went on strike Monday against film and television producers--say they are working barely half the hours they once did.

Non-union couriers, they claim, often the relatives or friends of studio executives, are taking over more and more of their duties.

Drivers Moonlight

To survive, the drivers have had to supplement their Hollywood work with jobs that range from recycling Harley Davidson motorcycle parts to driving produce trucks from Los Angeles to Boston.

“We’re being displaced,” said Weddle, carrying a picket sign last week outside Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, where he has worked the last seven years. “It’s as simple as this: They’re trying to break this union.”

The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers angrily denies such claims. Much of the time, according to the producers, the drivers working on a production are being paid simply to sit and wait for the day’s filming to end.

But producers do not deny that drivers are working fewer hours. The reason, they say, is the increase in non-union and “runaway” productions. And the reason for that, they contend, can be found in the costs associated with union productions.

Nick Counter, president of the producers’ alliance, said the $16- and $17-per-hour wages paid most drivers have raised film and television production costs to the point that many producers find it easier and cheaper to film outside the state and country.

Under the current contract, Counter said, the drivers’ wages are $2- and $3-per-hour more than the wages paid to Teamsters driving for Coca-Cola and other local companies.

“More and more work in Hollywood is either going to non-union or cheaper union shops or to other states and Canada,” Counter said. “The hours worked by Teamsters Local 399 have dropped 16% over the past two years. That translates into $14 million in lost wages and benefits.”

Pay Freeze Sought

The latest offer by the producers’ alliance calls for a three-year pay freeze for most limousine, van and station wagon drivers and per-hour increases ranging from 45 cents to 72 cents for big rig and heavy equipment drivers.

In addition, the producers want to change work rules so that drivers who have worked only three days during the week can be called in on weekends without having to be paid overtime.

The 2,000 drivers--joined on the picket line by 1,100 Hollywood electricians and laborers--say the amended workweek is a major sticking point in lapsed negotiations. Another troubling issue for them is a producer’s proposal that would require laborers and electricians to drive themselves and their equipment to location sites, instead of being driven by Teamsters as is now the practice.

Union negotiators contend that if pay concessions are needed to make Hollywood more competitive with out-of-state and overseas producers, the burden should be borne not by drivers and craft workers but by high-salaried actors and executives.

“The producers’ offer is unacceptable to us,” said Mike Shepherd, a strike coordinator for Local 399. “We’ll stay out 150 years if it takes us. We’ll bury this industry.”

No new talks have been called by federal mediators and the strike shows every sign of being protracted. Local Teamsters leaders have scheduled talks next week with regional and national union officials on ways to slow down film and television production outside Los Angeles.

This is the second major strike to hit the film industry this year, but unlike screenwriters, who virtually shut down production with their six-month walkout, the drivers realize that their skills are rather easily replaced. In fact, several of the major studios--vowing that production will not be affected--have already hired non-union drivers.

“If they find out that the scabs have the skill and the ability, I guess the producers will never find it necessary to bargain with us,” said Earl Bush, secretary-treasurer of Local 399.

While guilds representing actors, directors and writers have all expressed support for the striking workers, their contracts with the producers’ alliance preclude them from joining the strike.

Picketing Pressure

So what the Teamsters lack in leverage they are hoping to make up with vocal picket lines.

On Monday, the first day of the strike, the producers charged that the striking workers temporarily shut down production on two Stephen J. Cannell productions--”Hunter” and “Sonny Spoon”--by resorting to violence and intimidation.

In addition to bomb and death threats, employees of Cannell Studios reported slashed and deflated tires on nine vehicles, a severed brake line on a semi-trailer, punctures in a mobile dressing room vehicle and physical assaults against at least three workers.

On Wednesday, Cannell, Lorimar and MTM/CBS studios were granted a temporary restraining order preventing pickets from obstructing people and vehicles entering and leaving the studios and location sites.

The order issued by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Kurt Lewin also prohibits strikers from threatening anyone with bodily harm and from disrupting filming by flashing lights and making loud noises.

A motion for a permanent injunction will be heard Oct. 18. Several other studios--including Disney, Universal and Paramount--have indicated that they will go to court seeking the same order.

In a letter to the 3,200 workers on strike, union leaders revealed that some striking workers “may have engaged in illegal activity by telephoning certain members of management and their families and threatening them with loss of life and personal injury.”

“We instruct and implore you to obey the law to its fullest,” the letter said. “This type of action can only delay a settlement, and could possible cause us to lose.”

Union leaders denied rumors that the pickets are being joined by longshoremen and Teamsters from Chicago and Detroit.

“There is no outside muscle, absolutely not,” strike leader Shepherd said. “This is strictly Hollywood Teamsters. We’re not the gun-toting hoods portrayed in the press. Our guys are the guys next door. Our guys are the Little League coaches.”