Guild Aims Contract Campaign at Writers

With an appeal for unity and little fanfare, a tense Writers Guild of America on Friday unveiled its campaign to sell a proposed three-year contract to 11,000 union members.

Ratification of the contract hammered out last week with Hollywood producers has been considered a slam dunk. But the guild still must convince writers that the $41 million in additional payments claimed under this new contract is enough.

Packages detailing provisions of the contract were mailed to guild members Friday. An informational meeting for writers is scheduled for Thursday, and writers will be able to submit position statements, pro and con, for distribution to the full membership.

On June 4, writers are scheduled to vote on the proposal. Results will be announced the following day.

Despite a disastrous vote three years ago when guild members on the East Coast narrowly rejected the guild’s first negotiated contract, WGA executives say they have no plans for a glitzy public relations campaign.

“There will be no campaign on behalf of the guild to influence our members,” said Cheryl Rhoden, the guild’s assistant director. “It will be presented in a very straightforward way with the facts. Our members will review the facts and make their own decision.”

Still, the 22-page package, posted Friday on the guild’s Web site, paints a picture of arduous negotiations spanning seven weeks. Guild representatives highlighted their victories in fending off efforts by studios to reduce payments to writers, and they acknowledged certain areas in which they came up short.

In a statement by the 24-member negotiating committee, the group said they wrestled over whether to call for a strike authorization vote. Few members wanted to strike, they said, but “overwhelmingly writers were willing to strike if the leadership of the WGA east and west had good reason to ask them to.”

“While we did not achieve all the goals we sought, we do believe we won substantially all that we could in this round of negotiations--strike or no strike,” they said.

The guild failed in its push to extend the contract to animation writers. Animation writers for prime-time shows such as “The Simpsons,” “King of the Hill” and “Futurama” are currently covered in side agreements, but the companies refused to formally extend coverage to all animation writers.

“It was with deep sadness and frustration that we were unable to get animation writers included under the contract,” said Patric M. Verrone, supervising producer on “Futurama” and a member of the Writers Guild governing board.

“We told the companies that we could do it the easy way or the hard way, by going company by company, show by show,” Verrone said. “And the companies said go to it.”

The group also failed to revamp 16-year-old residual formulas for videocassettes and DVDs. Instead, the group said it was forced to focus on protecting payments for video-on-demand systems, including the Internet, that might someday replace VCRs and DVD players.

The package provided new details on the proposed contract, including a week’s vacation after six months of employment for “the hard-pressed writers” of daytime soap operas. Writers will be invited to cast readings and be listed on cast and crew lists. And companies will pay to send two credited screenwriters to the premieres of motion pictures.

“We confronted significant opposition from the companies in these talks,” wrote John Wells, president of the West Coast guild, and Herb Sargent, East Coast guild president, in a letter to members.

“These are historic gains that we hope can form the basis for further advances in the future,” Wells and Sargent wrote. “With unity and preparation we can continue to advance the economic and creative issues of primary importance to writers.”