Entertainment Industry Labor Relations

After breaking off talks March 1, representatives of the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers will meet Tuesday in an effort to reach a new contract before the current one expires May 2 at 12:01 a.m. Writers and studios are at odds largely over the payments that writers receive when their work is rerun on cable TV, in foreign markets, on the Fox network and when it is sold on video or DVD. Writers last went on strike in 1988 for 22 weeks.

Hollywood studios and writers over the last six weeks barely inched toward a resolution of critical financial issues to avert a possible strike, despite an impression in the industry that they were making progress, according to participants on both sides of the contract talks. Although negotiations between studios and the Writers Guild of America did not break off formally until Thursday, both sides say they realized talks would be fruitless almost immediately after they started on Jan. 22.

Federal mediators have summoned both sides in the 10-week-old strike by actors against the advertising industry to a meeting later this month to try to break the stalemate. The New York session is scheduled for July 20, with the possibility that it could last another day if mediators make progress in trying to push both sides back into serious negotiations to end the strike over how actors are to be paid for appearing in commercials.

Representatives of actors and advertisers confirmed Monday that they will meet again next week in New York to try to jump-start contract negotiations that broke down late last month. Meetings are set to start Oct. 19, with both sides promising that they will remain at the bargaining table if progress is made.

Actors Reach Tentative Agreement With Producers: Representatives of the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists reached agreement on a new three-year contract with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers for theatrical and TV movies. Details were not disclosed. The existing contract is scheduled to expire on June 30. Negotiations started on Feb. 7.

As usual, Hollywood's writers are spinning tales of greed, power and ego. Only this time, they're talking about each other. The Writers Guild of America, the last union to shut Hollywood down when it struck for 22 weeks back in 1988, is locked in a series of bitter internal feuds, with tensions boiling over last week as film and television writers in the East torpedoed a contract their western counterparts had just approved, albeit amid strong internal opposition.

Members of the eastern faction of the Writers Guild of America rejected a proposed three-year contract with film and television producers that was ratified last week by their counterparts in the West. In a statement, officials with the group said that the negative vote was partly a protest of the guild's "fast-track" negotiating process, or procedures in which the labor leaders negotiate with producers well in advance of contract expirations.

Hoping to avert another strike like the one that paralyzed the entertainment industry in 1988, the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers leadership announced on Wednesday in West Hollywood a tentative plan to extend their contract until 1995. The proposal, which faces a vote of the Writers Guild membership next month, would add three years to the existing contract. It also would provide a mechanism for amending the terms of the agreement each year.

The union representing striking film and television writers said it has received notice from about 50 production companies seeking to independently settle the week-old contract dispute. Cheryl Rhoden, a spokeswoman for the Writers Guild of America, said the producers of NBC's "Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" were among the companies hoping to end the strike. Rhoden said the union's board of directors was set to consider the requests at a meeting Monday night in West Hollywood.