Looming Labor Unrest

Your grim cover story makes it seem like possible strikes in the entertainment industry are a fait accompli, while focusing only on the privileged few for whom a strike means an interruption of production (“As the Storm Clouds Gather,” by Robert W. Welkos, Lorenza Munoz, Paul Brownfield and Brian Lowry, Dec. 31).

As a counterpoint, let me illustrate how these self-fulfilling prophecies of impending labor disputes would affect me:

As actors and writers stop work, I will be put out of work. As executives retreat to their summer homes, my house will face foreclosure.

As television networks scramble to air more reality programming, I’ll be scrambling to avoid the reality of being thrown out on the street.

There are harsher consequences to a strike this year than not getting new episodes of “The Gilmore Girls.”

BRUCE ISAACSON

North Hollywood

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The town mobilizing for guild strikes before negotiations even begin evokes memories of Y2K where people sought to achieve gravity and stature by supplying ever grimmer predictions of disaster.

Obviously contracts need to be adjusted to reflect changes in the way filmed entertainment is produced and marketed. Yet, if parties come to the table with specific needs that can be met by agreement, rather than waiting to see what the other side offers as a basis for complaint, matters can be resolved.

I’m an active member of both the Writers Guid of America West and the Screen Actors Guild. My loyalty to the guilds is earned by vast benefits they have brought. If there’s a strike, I support it.

But I hope instead that we can party on!

PAUL EHRMANN

Santa Monica

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Your cover title and art last week suggested an in-depth report of two impending strikes that, if they occur, will drastically affect the entire entertainment industry. Hundreds of thousands of actors, writers and--let’s not forget--below-the-line crew members could very well be out of work for several months. The studios’ fear of the strikes is indeed creating an immediate boom in production, as you addressed in the articles. But this is a short-lived, six-month increase in jobs that carries with it the underlying statement from the studios: “If we ramp up production now, we’ll survive a strike that lasts months because we’ve got product in the pipeline.” And the entire industry will suffer for it.

Beyond the potentially staggering fiscal impact of the strikes, your stories also forgot to explain--even give a glimpse of--the issues surrounding each guild’s contract positions (aside from one line from screenwriter Mike Werb). Or the studios’ positions for that matter. I have been a film director’s assistant for several years. I have my first baby due in three months and an impending purchase of my first home. And I read The Times for real information that affects me and the thousands like me, not for fluff pieces that list a manager’s clients or a producer’s birthday scheduling concerns.

DAVE HENRI

Thousand Oaks

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Wake up! We have been in a simulated strike mode for over two years. California’s greatest export, entertainment, was exported to Canada where we spent over $10 billion on TV and film production (according to Daily Variety). There are no figures I know of for the production coin being spent in “right-to-work countries” like Romania, Australia, the Philippines, Russia, and elsewhere in Eastern and Western Europe. All this “California production coin” is being spent on foreign soil for nonunion television and film production targeted at the U.S. audience.

The major studios and agencies have been benefiting from this practice for a long time. Is a strike really going to stop the runaway production problem? The only people who will be hurt and will really bleed if a strike happens would be the working-class actor, writer, agent, director, crew person, and any business that benefits from television and film dollars exchanged on American soil. (Oh, and what about all the tax dollars we lose?)

Let’s make it more attractive to keep production coin in California (and America) for working-class heroes, then we’ll at least have the financial opportunity to work out the residual issues that everybody is so concerned about.

DARRYL MARSHAK

Talent agent/partner, Gold Marshak

Liedtke Associates, Burbank

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Aside from the well-written article written by Stephen Cannell (clearly not one of your own writers), the gist of the pieces was that writers and actors might suffer. Gee, isn’t that sad.

Never mind the hundreds of thousands of others who have absolutely nothing to gain in any strike action by either guild. None of these people participate in any kind of residuals, nor do they benefit from anything else at stake in the two contracts in question. They also won’t receive any help from the strike funds these two wealthy guilds have built up. And they outnumber the writers and actors involved by a factor of at least 20.

It was bad enough that you belittled all of us when you published what amounted to a love letter to Vancouver recently, but you now heap insult upon injury by reminding us of what we all already know about, and do it by interviewing those with the least to lose. Thanks.

MICHAEL MOST

Visual effects supervisor

Marina del Rey