Stage Is Set for WGA Election

The union representing Hollywood screenwriters is set to meet federal regulators Wednesday to review ground rules for a government-supervised election that already is shaping up as one of the most contentious in its history.

The election, scheduled for September, comes amid stalled negotiations toward a new contract between writers and producers, and fierce internal debate about the future of the Writers Guild of America, West, which has been torn by the resignations of two presidents this year.

Wednesday’s session will be conducted by a representative of the Labor Department, which is monitoring the vote for a new president. Federal overseers are expected to discuss election procedures with candidates and guild members in a meeting set for 7 p.m. at the union’s Los Angeles headquarters, a union spokeswoman confirmed.

The special election follows the back-to-back resignations of Victoria Riskin, who was found ineligible to hold office, and her successor, Charles Holland, who quit after The Times reported that military and educational records didn’t support his claims about his past.

Hollywood writers have been working without a contract since their old deal with producers expired two months ago. As talks faltered, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers turned its attention to negotiations with other unions.

The Writers Guild is facing a vote in which a vice president’s position and eight of 16 board slots also are at issue. But only the presidential contest is under federal supervision. The union agreed to that arrangement after Labor Department investigators found that Riskin’s election to a two-year term last fall was invalid because she lacked enough paid writing jobs to qualify for office.

Would-be candidates can petition for a ballot spot through July 23. The presidential vote so far pits only current guild President Daniel Petrie Jr., who was appointed after the resignations, against Eric Hughes, who lost to Riskin last year in an election in which fewer than 1,400 of about 7,500 eligible voters cast ballots.

Under the campaign slogan “Truth for a Change,” Hughes last week launched a website, www.erichughes.net, that promised soon to post unspecified documents reflecting “what has been done to us by the people who were meant to protect us.”

In an interview, Hughes said he expected to call for the removal of top guild staff members, including Executive Director John McLean, and a complete overhaul of the high-stakes arbitration system under which the union settles disputes over credit for movies and television shows.

Hughes said he believed that McLean and others had gone into negotiations with no clear strategy and had withheld information from members about an expensive lobbying campaign that was supposed to resist the Federal Communications Commission’s move last year to loosen media industry regulations.

He also said guild staff members had unduly influenced the assignment of disputed credits, which are supposed to be determined by writer-members serving as arbiters.

“Writers don’t determine credits. The staff does,” Hughes said.

Cheryl Rhoden, a guild spokeswoman and assistant executive director, declined to discuss election-related issues. But Rhoden noted that all lobbying expenses were approved by the union’s board and elected officers.

In a separate interview, Petrie sharply disputed the notion that the union’s paid executives had usurped writers’ prerogatives. “I don’t think we have a runaway staff,” he said.

Asked about key issues, Petrie said he would use the election to explain the guild’s stance in the stalled talks with producers. But he said the vote was likely also to turn on perennial sore points, including the problem of “free rewrites,” which occur when writers violate their own contracts by yielding to producer pressure for unpaid revisions.

Petrie said he planned to propose, as a cure, internal guild discipline of writers who do such work. He said he also expected to argue for meetings or structures to shore up what he called an increasingly distant relationship with the Writers Guild of America, East, based in New York.

Like Hughes, Petrie voiced concern about the arbitration system, but he said he was reluctant to see it “politicized.” He suggested that a pool of seasoned writers might be recruited to help others navigate the system if the union could find a way to avoid legal liability for advice offered by such mentors.

Discontent over arbitrations boiled over several months ago when guild member Michael Alan Eddy filed a still-pending federal lawsuit in Los Angeles against the union over credits for Warner Bros.’ Tom Cruise epic “The Last Samurai.” Hughes is expected to be an expert witness for Eddy in the suit but said he wouldn’t be compensated for his help.

Another simmering arbitration fight has pitted veteran writers Tom Nursall and Harris Goldberg against the union, which assigned them only shared story credit for an upcoming Paramount Pictures comedy, “Without a Paddle,” although they held what is usually a favored position in the process as the script’s original writers.

“I think the arbitration system is broken,” said Nursall, who hasn’t filed suit but strongly argues that staff conduct in arbitrations should be an election issue.

“This can damage careers and affect income to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars,” he said. “It’s outrageous and needs to be changed.”