Corporate Looters

In response to “The Looters of Corporate America,” Column Right, Sept. 1:

Imagine my surprise, as a union member, to read George Will’s column and find myself in agreement with him. He rightly pinpointed the pervading sickness that infects corporate America: The disproportionate ratio of chief executive officers’ pay to the lack of profits generated by these very same CEOs is obscene.

It heartened me that Will mentioned the Walt Disney Co. He said, accurately, that the Disney chief executive made more in one day than the average worker at Disney made in one year. To be fair, though, Disney is not alone. Most CEOs in Hollywood are in the same leaky boat.

The legend in the picture industry is that the studio labor unions are all-powerful. The blame for the 185% increase in production costs over the last decade is invariably laid at the door of labor. The point that is never mentioned is that the cost of a union crew on a film project is less than 15% of the production cost of that film. Yet, when the product does not perform as profitably as the producer wants it to, it is never the fault of the producer or writer or star. Somehow labor is forced to take the brunt.

On the heels of the front-page article (Sept. 2) detailing how profits have dipped in Hollywood in the last year, I wonder whatever happened to the concept that propelled the motion picture industry in years past: a good story, well-told?

BARBARA WHITAKER, President IATSE Local 705, Motion Picture Costumers, Los Angeles