TV and Film Face More Labor Unrest

With a strike by movie and TV writers in its eighth week, Hollywood is already bracing for its next Big Labor Problem: a possible showdown between the studios and about 25,000 craft, transportation and unskilled production workers.

A production strike could come as early as July 31, with the expiration of current three-year contracts between the entertainment companies and 27 Southern California unions, including those affiliated with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE).

If that happens, the fall TV season is almost certain to be delayed--and Hollywood could be caught in its most serious labor strife since the craft unions last struck the studios in the 1940s.

“This negotiation is very volatile. Nobody on either side is taking this one lightly,” said Bill McCall, business agent for Laborers Local 727, which represents unskilled movie and TV workers.

ABC programming chief Brandon Stoddard and NBC programming chief Brandon Tartikoff have both said in recent interviews that the fall TV season would be delayed at least into late November if production, already impaired by the Writers Guild of America strike, doesn’t resume by early July.

Last week, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, an industry bargaining group, began presenting the individual unions with contract proposals that included demands for major concessions in seniority requirements and work rules. The revisions could result in lower staffing levels on films and TV shows and the elimination of some unions, including Local 727, whose 250 members might be absorbed in another union under the studio proposals.

“(They’re proposing) a major, almost catastrophic change in the way people work on motion pictures,” said IATSE spokesman Mac St. Johns.

St. Johns and other union officials concede that at least some of the changes may be necessary to prevent further loss of production to Canada and cheap-labor states or additional tilt toward non-union work in the Los Angeles area.

But they insist that any concessions must be delicately balanced with company assurances of increased union work in Southern California. “Our basic policy is to get a contract under which we’ll get more work,” said St. Johns.

According to the California Film Commission, only about 30% of the filming in Southern California--largely that done by the major studios, such as 20th Century Fox and Universal Pictures, or by big independents, such as Lorimar-Telepictures--is completed under union contracts.

Much of the rest, the studios complain, is done by union members who fill their slack time by taking occasional jobs, at lower wage rates, on non-union independent films. “In Los Angeles, union members often do non-union work, and that’s an ever-increasing problem for both sides,” said J. Nicholas Counter III, chief negotiator for the alliance.

Membership in at least some local craft unions has declined in recent years. Employers’ health-and-welfare contributions to members, one ready measure of union vitality, have also declined despite a boom in movie and TV production, according to the producers’ alliance.

But some labor leaders now fear that the studios, perceiving union weakness, will attempt to gut the union system this summer.

“The proposals, as they’re currently structured, would guarantee a strike,” said McCall. Describing the producers’ demands as “outlandish,” the business agent said his members--who rarely experience Hollywood’s glitter outside of work hours--can’t afford even such “middle-class” amenities as a house in suburban Azusa unless they work overtime schedules that can approach 100 hours a week.

Some union leaders have privately speculated that company negotiators hardened their position toward the striking writers in order to wear down the Teamsters and craft-union members, who stand to lose income from canceled TV work in the next several months if the writers’ walkout continues.

Gene Allen, executive director of Art Directors Local 876, declined to say whether he perceived such a company strategy. But he noted that the writers’ strike had depressed employment in his union to about 35%, compared with a normal level of about 50%.

Counter declined to comment on claims that the producers were playing “hard ball” with the writers to gain advantage with the crafts. But an alliance spokesman said complex negotiations with the separate craft unions would make it increasingly difficult to schedule concurrent negotiations with the writers.

Privately, one company negotiator said he believed that the production workers would be “hungrier” for a settlement if they lost work due to a prolonged writers’ strike. Jokingly, another said: “I’ve been wondering if we didn’t dupe the writers into taking a stupid strike in order to soften up the crafts.”

The TV networks, which have weathered their own strikes and cost-cutting turmoil recently, might be more than usually willing to see the producers of programs endure overlapping strikes this summer, since their fall schedules are heavy with the Olympics, presidential election and World Series.

But major studios risk jeopardizing their feature-film divisions if either strike interferes with summer movie production starts, which become next summer’s box-office fare. “If we can’t get things going in June or July, then we’re in trouble late next summer,” said one top movie executive, who declined to be identified.

At the Academy Awards ceremony, actor Sean Connery told reporters that the strike had delayed his planned work on Paramount’s “Indiana Jones” sequel, set for release next summer. But a Paramount spokeswoman said that the film will begin production as scheduled May 16 and that no other Paramount movie had been affected by the strike.

So far, no movie producer questioned has admitted to any serious trouble from the writers’ strike.

According to some observers, however, this year’s labor woes have already taken a lasting toll on the entertainment business. “Three people in two days have told me, ‘It’s just not any fun any more,’ ” said union leader McCall.