Bitter Issue of Writers Guild Election Is Strike of ’88

The grueling Hollywood writers’ strike that virtually shut down TV and film production ended more than a year ago. But this month’s campaign for the top posts at the Writers Guild of America, West is reviving the painful memories and internal dissent prompted by that five-month walkout, the longest in movie history.

Winners in the current voting--which ends Thursday--will help chart the course for the guild’s next round of negotiations with management in 1992. Those contract talks aren’t expected to be any easier than previous negotiations in the 1980s, when increasingly intransigent producers sought and won rollbacks from Hollywood’s creative unions.

While Writers Guild elections typically are more spirited than other union contests in Hollywood, this year’s race is especially rough. “It’s pretty nasty,” said incumbent president George Kirgo. Added one of his two opponents, Burt Prelutsky: “There seems to be hard feelings this time, a lot more dirty politics.”

Many of those hard feelings are a direct outgrowth of the strike. Prelutsky and his allies wanted the guild leadership to be tougher with management--even if it meant a longer strike--while presidential candidate L. Travis Clark was part of a coalition of dissident writers who threatened to cross picket lines to go back to work.

Kirgo falls squarely in the middle, defending his own performance as president during the strike, and that of executive director Brian Walton, the London-born lawyer who was hired to run the guild four years ago.

Many in the guild view the election as a referendum on Walton, who was thrown into the limelight as the union’s chief negotiator during the strike. Kirgo lists the future of Walton as one of the two most important issues facing the guild, right alongside the union’s need to cope with the increasing globalization of film and TV production.

“(Walton) is one of the most brilliant people I’ve ever met,” said Kirgo. “For us to lose him would be a tragedy.” Kirgo’s allies hint strongly that Walton would leave if Prelutsky--considered the most serious challenger to the incumbent--won the election.

Walton will say only that his contract runs through 1992, and he has “no plans to leave the guild earlier than that.”

Walton received a standing ovation when guild members met to ratify the strike settlement in August, 1988, but Kirgo’s two opponents for president don’t think he deserved it.

“Somehow, (Walton) wound up being the hero,” said Prelutsky, who has won awards for his TV movies and has written for such shows as “MASH,” “Newhart” and “Family Ties.” “But I don’t think the strike was successful.”

As a member of the guild’s board, Prelutsky cast what he calls a “symbolic” vote against the final strike settlement, and he continues to believe that the guild should have extracted more gains from management.

Prelutsky has been critical of Walton and Kirgo for other reasons too. “Brian is sucking up too much power and George has been an accessory to that,” said Prelutsky. During the strike, he insisted, “the board of directors was cut out of the loop.”

Walton disputes Prelutsky’s claims, noting that board meetings during the strike averaged one per week and totaled more than 80 hours. “In addition, several board members were on the negotiating committee and the president (Kirgo) was at almost all the negotiations,” he said. From the opposite end of the spectrum, Clark also chastises the guild’s handling of the strike. A critic of contemporary union leadership in general, Clark said the guild’s leaders should have tried harder to avert a strike by reaching an early accommodation with management. “The leaders were saying, ‘We’re going to bring this town to its knees.’ But this is our community, our town,” Clark said. “Negotiations should not start 30 days before a contract ends. (Guild leaders) should be keeping up contact with management. A strike should be a last resort.”

Clark also contends that neither Kirgo nor Walton has been accessible to the guild’s membership during or since the strike. “My argument is not with management right now,” Clark said, “it’s with an elitist leadership that doesn’t give its members access.”

Walton calls the charges of elitism “ludicrous.” He said that between 1985, when he came to the guild, and 1988, he “personally met with 2,000 or more writers in small groups. . . . I came to the guild deeply concerned about making it a member-oriented service organization, and a very democratic one.”

Kirgo dismisses the accusation that he and Walton were inaccessible during the strike as “a joke. . . . I was on the phone day and night. I was never absent from a picket.” As for Prelutsky’s criticism of the settlement, Kirgo notes that in the final settlement, the union chocked up 33 gains over management’s first offer.

Though critical of Prelutsky, Kirgo saves his sharpest attack for Clark, saying his election would be a “travesty.” “He’s been a member of the guild for two years and he thinks he’s ready to be president,” Kirgo said.

Both Kirgo and Prelutsky attack Clark for his involvement last year with 21 dissident writers who not only threatened to cross picket lines, but also asked the National Labor Relations Board to invalidate provisions of the union constitution preventing members from resigning and going back to work.

“If he won, would he then quit the guild?” asked Prelutsky.

“We never said we would resign,” Clark responded. “We said that anyone who did want to (resign during a strike) should have the right to do so.” The labor board later sided with the 21 dissidents.

It is unclear how much support Clark, a former civil rights activist who co-created the TV show “Tour of Duty,” can draw. Although the 21 dissidents attracted about 550 interested writers to an informational meeting last summer, many writers are still bitter about the group’s threatened secession in the midst of a difficult strike.

Clark has engaged in some mudslinging of his own. In a Sept. 5 letter, Clark, who is black, virtually accused the guild of racism when he claimed that a non-candidate opponent had gained privileged access to his candidate’s statement. “I look forward to being reassured that my candidacy has not been trivialized in the manner to which African-American candidates have been accustomed in so many elections in this country,” Clark wrote to the guild.

(The non-candidate opponent, Brad Radnitz, had referred to Clark’s statement in a written critique of Clark and others. But guild spokeswoman Cheryl Rhoden said the candidate statements were made available to all guild members once they were submitted.)

Even the secretary-treasurer race is not immune to these rough-and-tumble politics. Two allies of candidate Adam Rodman purchased an advertisement in Daily Variety contending that the election of one of his opponents, Oliver Crawford, “would be highly detrimental to the best interests of the guild.”

In an interview, Rodman said the advertisement was necessary because Crawford, a 25-year board member and a Prelutsky ally, is well-known among guild members. “Ollie is just unqualified,” said Rodman, a Kirgo ally. “Everyone knows his name and they may associate that with competence.”

“I try to stay away from these scurrilous attacks,” Crawford responded. “I don’t think they belong in this organization.”

The third candidate for secretary-treasurer, David P. Lewis, has managed to stay out of this particular fray.

Despite the high emotions in this campaign, the election results will probably turn on a fraction of the guild’s membership. According to Rhoden, no more than 1,600 of the guild’s nearly 6,500 eligible members ever vote in officer elections.

The Writers Guild, insists Kirgo, came out of the strike with a reputation for strength and unity. The current campaign is “embarrassing,” he said. “I’m just embarrassed by all this.”