Company Town : A Different Hollywood Order : Labor, Management Face New Technologies, New Players

Labor and management are grappling with new technologies and new players. And the decisions they make in the next few months will have far-reaching ramifications.

On Wednesday, a three-day meeting of the boards of the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists ended with a 128-8 vote in favor of a plan to merge the two groups. Such a move, 50 years in the talking stage, has gained momentum as changes in the face of Hollywood have triggered territorial disputes and driven home the importance of a united front.

Meanwhile, three years of talks between the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers come to a head today, when the guild’s negotiating committee is expected to decide whether to accept a tentative agreement zeroing in on the problematic arenas of interactive media, the growth of cable and emerging TV networks.

“The new technologies add urgency to the discussions,” says AFTRA spokesman Dick Moore, referring to the union’s upcoming negotiations with producers beginning Feb. 7. “And we’re sitting across the table from multinational companies with vast holdings. The cast of characters and ways of doing business have changed drastically.”

The WGA contract expires May 2 and the SAG-AFTRA contract expires June 30. Though neither guild is forecasting a strike, the studios are keeping an eye on things--just in case.

A brief rundown of key issues on the table:

SAG and AFTRA

On Monday, the unions finalized a proposal for submission to the producers alliance. The document targets the proliferation of out-of-country production in which pay scales are lower, the tendency of producers to ask experienced talent to work for scale, and the fact that the Fox network--despite its acquisition of NFL football and a dozen new network affiliates--is paying less than the Big Three when it comes to prime-time minimums and residuals.

“If it walks like a network and talks like a network, it should pay like a network,” says SAG President Barry Gordon.

The Fox debate has divided the management ranks. While the Big Three join labor in opposing the double standard, the producers group--which includes Twentieth Century Fox as well as Warner Bros. and Paramount with emerging networks of their own--embraces it.

“Fox doesn’t have the same audience or advertising muscle,” insists AMPTP President Nicholas Counter III. “Even the FCC, an independent body, ruled it isn’t a ‘network.’ ”

Organizing the burgeoning interactive arena is another priority. The target is not the studios, which have been slow to jump on the bandwagon, but a host of new CD-ROM producers and other employers inexperienced in the entertainment world who have a sudden need for performers.

Then there’s the proposed merger--a dream that requires further action by the boards of both unions and membership ratification before becoming a reality. Though SAG has been responsible for the film arena and AFTRA for sound recordings and live TV, they tread on each other’s toes when it comes to prime-time TV, commercials, industrial films and the interactive realm.

“We have overlapping jurisdictions, there’s strength in numbers, and there are economies of scale,” says national AFTRA President Shelby Scott. “And we really do do the same work.”

Though they have overlapping membership, the centralized SAG and decentralized AFTRA--a federation of autonomous local branches--are very different animals.

“In the past, it was like looking at things through two different ends of a telescope,” says Richard Masur, third vice president of SAG. “Though there’s no warfare now, there’s the potential for divisiveness if the merger doesn’t come through.”

SAG President Gordon, who’s stepping down in November, hopes the merger will be his legacy. “The last mile will be the toughest,” he concedes, “but we still have a lot of steam going into the turn.”

By scheduling negotiations early, both labor and management aim to minimize the chance of a strike and avoid a de facto industry shutdown.

“We’re being cautious about green-lighting films going before the camera after mid-April,” admits Mike Marcus, president of MGM.

So is Peter Chernin, chairman of Twentieth Century Fox. “I might push back a May or June shoot until after July,” he says. “But I’m not about to rush a movie into production just to make an artificial start date.”

Writers Guild and AMPTP

Though the WGA and the AMPTP have agreed in principle, details of the agreement are being ironed out. Most creative matters, such as free rewrites, have been resolved. But there’s only a temporary solution to the prickly “possessive credits” issue in which a movie written by someone else is called “a Richard Attenborough film” or “a movie by Martin Scorsese.”

The stumbling blocks? Once again, the Fox brouhaha, as well as the demand for compensation when script material is reused in interactive media and CD-ROMs. “We’re not trying to stifle emerging technology by placing unreasonable demands,” says WGA President Frank Pierson. “We just want our share of the back end.”

Though the WGA has gone out on strike seven times, a Contract Adjustment Committee--through which the guild, the AMPTP and the three traditional networks meet to make ongoing contractual changes--now serves as a decompression valve. Frustration with the last-minute AMPTP tinkering, however, led one faction at the last WGA board meeting to suggest leaving the table for a few months.

Pierson is more optimistic but admits patience is wearing thin. “We’re approaching the end of our rope,” he says. “It’s fish or cut bait. If we have to plunge into conventional negotiations, we’ll have to start preparing for a strike.”

Counter chalks up such talk to saber rattling and defends his painstaking approach. “The industry has made mistakes in the past,” he says. “And everything’s more complicated when you’re parceling up a landscape that hasn’t fully materialized.”