Unions Pledge Support to Directors

Film and television directors gathered fellow Hollywood union officials around them for cheer and support Monday on the eve of a selective strike against two big movie studios and a TV network--an action that producers warn will mean a lockout by other industry giants.

Tension continued to escalate in the contract dispute, even though negotiations resumed Monday. The strike by the 8,500 members of the Directors Guild of America is scheduled to begin at 6 a.m. today and could--with a lockout--sharply curtail film and television production.

“At this point it does not look hopeful,” Nicholas Counter III, president of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, said late Monday afternoon. Counter would say only that negotiators had “closed the gap somewhat” since the guild’s three-year contract expired June 30, but remain far apart on several issues. Negotiations on film and television production contracts were being conducted in Los Angeles while talks between the DGA and NBC on the network’s staff directors contract--covering employees who direct NBC news, sports and daytime and late night programming--were under way in New York.

DGA President Gil Cates termed a news conference he held Monday with representatives of the Screen Actors Guild, the International Assn. of Theatrical Stage Employees and the Teamsters Union “a display of unity that is unprecedented.”

Such a display was necessary, Cates said, “because the conglomerates that now run our motion-picture studios no longer care about working men and women. They only care about the bottom line.”

After DGA negotiators turned down a “final offer” by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, the DGA’s national board Saturday decided to call a Tuesday strike against Columbia Pictures, Warner Bros. and NBC. The board said other companies could be strike targets at any time.

On Sunday, however, a CBS spokesman and studio representatives said DGA members would be shut out of non-struck major studios and TV networks if the work stoppage against the three companies takes place.

A lockout at the non-struck studios will undoubtedly mean picket lines there, it was pointed out by guild officials, in order to take advantage of the support of the Teamsters and other unions.

Support Strike ‘100%’

Earl Bush, secretary treasurer of the Studio Transportation Drivers Local 399, International Conference of Teamsters, pledged that his union would “support this strike 100%.”

“No Teamster, knowing Teamsters as I do today, will cross the picket line,” he told reporters at the DGA news conference.

Producers alliance President Counter said the Teamsters could not order their members not to cross the directors’ picket lines and “if the Teamsters are advising them (to cross), we will take appropriate action.”

He did not say what that action would be.

And although studios were making plans to go ahead with production using non-DGA directors, a Universal Television series producer conceded that he did not see how that could happen. He said it would take several days to train new directors and assistants who--in some cases, at least--have been lined up to fill the jobs of DGA directors.

“The crush could come on day one,” the producer said. He suggested that some workers could intentionally slow production out of sympathy for the directors. “A star could really question a (non-union) director. He could say, ‘I don’t think you know what you’re doing.’ ”

A typical television show employs up to 80 crew members, of which five or six, including the director and various assistants, are DGA members.

Cates told the Monday afternoon news conference that the producers “have the audacity to come to us and say that in spite of the fact that they are making countless millions . . . they say to us, ‘We want to send you out earning less than you did last year.’ Well, it’s not going to happen.”

A major stumbling block in the negotiations has been the producers’ demand for a rollback in residual payments on reruns, something the directors term unacceptable.

Asked whether a director working at a non-struck studio such as Paramount should report to the set today, Cates said, “Yes. You go to work . . . until they come to lock you out.”

In addition to the support from the Teamsters, which brought applause from an assemblage of DGA members at the news conference, Screen Actors Guild President Patty Duke Astin said that although she is both an actress and a director, “I am first and foremost a working woman.”

Thus, she said, she was supporting “the over 70,000 working men and women (in all industry trades) who really love their jobs and must be compensated for it.” She said SAG members are “in full support of the directors guild.”

Ken Orsatti, national executive secretary of SAG, said he could not legally tell actors not to cross the picket lines, but he said he was encouraging them not to because “residuals are the life blood of the actor. When an actor sees (a picket line) that actor must make a decision--whether to fight the battle now or fight it when we are at the negotiating table.”

Unnecessary Confrontation

International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees spokesman Mac St. Johns said the stagehands support the directors “in this unnecessary confrontation with the producers.” He said the alliance will do whatever it can “legally” do to support the directors and will “do no work that falls under the jurisdiction of the DGA.”

Counter, of the producers, said that any non-DGA workers who fail to report to work would be “replaced for that day, but not permanently.”

Jack Egger, chief of security for the 120-acre Burbank studios where Columbia Pictures and Warner Bros. are housed, acknowledged that his staff will implement “a (security) mode we go into to deal with unusual circumstances” if the guild goes on strike today.

Egger, however, would not specify what that mode was, except to say: “They (the pickets) won’t be on the lot, but on public property, so it’s the responsibility of the Burbank police to keep the peace. Our responsibility is to try and keep our entrances and exits open. I really can’t talk about it any more than that.”

Times staff writers Jack Jones and Victor Valle in Los Angeles and Jay Sharbutt in New York also contributed to this story.