Writers Guild Shuffle May Hurt Labor Relations

The sudden and unexpected departure this month of Brian Walton after 13 years as the top administrator of the union representing West Coast film and TV writers might be a signal that Hollywood is in for a more contentious era in labor relations.

The fate of one of Hollywood’s most influential labor leaders was sealed earlier this month when a seemingly innocent vote on overall policy issues turned into a referendum on both Walton and a negotiating strategy many believe is overly accommodating to the studios and networks. It was a paper-thin margin of defeat, with turnout as light as it is when people go the polls to vote on a water district bond.

Walton was as shocked as anyone. He and his supporters at the Writers Guild of America, West, believe that if the vote were held again today, with writers now fully aware of its ramifications, that both the turnout and result would be different.

Nonetheless, guild directors felt--and Walton agreed--that the honorable thing to do was abide by the vote and cut a severance deal four years before Walton’s contract expired.

On Tuesday, the same people kicking him out the door gave Walton a going-away tribute.

Still, to dismiss what happened to Walton as a voting fluke would be a mistake. The hostility that has accompanied an intense, yearlong rebellion of some writers against him is part of a larger pressure building in Hollywood like two plates of earth pushing against each other.

The cause is structural change in an industry in which foreign and cable TV markets are exploding while the traditional networks and TV syndication business that once made writers a good living are eroding, changes that many feel are passing Hollywood’s guilds by.

Critics of Walton and Hollywood’s other guild leaders believe that studios and networks aren’t properly sharing in lucrative revenue from foreign and cable markets. It’s not unusual for writers with Emmys and Oscars on the shelf, who once made a good living when their work was aired in reruns on broadcast stations, to open the mail now to find checks barely covering the cost of a soda because their work instead runs on one of the myriad cable channels fragmenting the television dial.

Also, costs for films and TV shows are soaring, causing studios and networks to squeeze costs for talent without the clout of a Steven Spielberg, Tom Cruise or TV writer and producer John Wells. Exacerbating pressures is the growing gulf in the talent guilds between the haves, the have-somes and the have-nots. Similar issues came up in talks this year that led to a new Screen Actors Guild contract.

As executive director of the Writers Guild in the West, Walton was what amounts to the CEO of the last talent union to have struck Hollywood and the one that drew more blood than any has before or since. That was 10 years ago, when writers nearly destroyed a TV season at a cost to the industry estimated at $500 million.

More than half of the guild’s current membership have joined the union since the strike. But Walton was there and in a unique position of having seen what happens when the ultimate doomsday scenario actually happens. He clearly dislikes strikes.

*

In an interview last week in the office he will soon vacate across the street from Farmers Market, Walton said Hollywood’s labor relations ought to be about fairness. Instead, it inevitably ends up being about power struggles.

“The studios are enormously generous to certain talent. But when it comes to what the guilds do, which is to negotiate the minimum levels, or floors, it becomes, in their view, a question of cost. They obviously want to keep it down,” Walton said.

Adding to the pressure for all guilds, Walton said, is what he terms the “salary compression” issue between the top-paid talent and everyone else.

“The amounts given to persons who are thought to put derrieres in theater seats has become enormous,” Walton said. “While the studios have a lot of resources, with the average cost of a movie in excess of $50 million, there has got to be some give somewhere. What tends to happen is it becomes harder for people to move up their price quotes in the middle range.”

After the 1988 strike, Walton became an advocate of “contract adjustment” talks that defuse tensions because they take place well before contracts expire. It’s a calmer, more measured style of negotiating in lieu of eleventh-hour talks littered with name calling and fists pounding on tables.

In Walton’s view, negotiators for studios and networks can’t budge much when pressure is as intense as it is with the clock ticking. When that happens, negotiators for the studios and the guilds are under the watchful eye of studio chiefs, other unions and the press, so the last thing they want to do is look weak. The way around that, Walton believes, is to hold talks well before that time is reached.

“It allows both sides to be more flexible, especially management. They can do that when nobody is looking down on them,” Walton said.

Using that method, Walton said, writers haven’t suffered the kind of rollbacks they had in the early 1980s. And there has been no strike.

It’s a misconception, Walton argued, that negotiating early and without intense hostility makes talks too easy.

“There’s this myth that by negotiating early, you don’t have a strike threat. Of course you do, and it’s much more effective if it’s over the horizon because it’s not making people nervous. The strike threat is geometrically more effective when you negotiate early,” Walton said.

Walton’s critics disagreed, saying that absent a strike threat or deadline for a strike, studios won’t negotiate seriously on issues that cost them significant money. What’s more, they argued, the aversion Walton and other guild leaders have to a potential strike takes the teeth out of the guild’s most potent weapon.

As a result, they said, the guild has failed to make meaningful gains in key areas, notably in foreign and cable TV residuals. Indeed, during the last round of negotiations, producers and writers effectively punted on the issue, agreeing to study it for two years.

Walton said those who believe that fist-pounding negotiations are the best strategy for Hollywood’s guild have a false sense of nostalgia for an era that never existed.

But he also acknowledged that he personally became one of the biggest issues. His critics said he became inflexible about approaches to negotiation. “Walton’s Guild of America” was what some of them sarcastically said the guild’s WGA initials stood for.

“One of the goals was to get rid of me because they perceived, incorrectly, that I so dominated the board and the guild,” Walton said.

The same board and guild dumped him and honored him on Tuesday.