Negotiator cast as hero -- or hindrance

As David Young took to the makeshift stage outside 20th Century Fox Studios on Friday morning, the crowd of more than 4,000 erupted in cheers, drowning out the roar of news helicopters hovering above.

“On day five we are winning this strike,” Young exclaimed at the rally along Avenue of the Stars, which kicked off with a rousing speech by the Rev. Jesse Jackson and a performance by singer-activist Tom Morello of the band Rage Against the Machine.

Much to his delight, the 48-year-old labor leader says he himself was treated like “a rock star” last week at a host of rallies and pickets that he orchestrated all over Los Angeles and New York. Young is not only the chief negotiator for the Writers Guild of America but the strategist behind the first major Hollywood strike in nearly two decades, making him perhaps the most revered and reviled man in the entertainment industry right now.

To many of the 10,000-plus members of the writers union seeking their share of future revenue, he’s a hero who galvanized a once-lethargic guild into a potent force with the will to take on the powerful media conglomerates.

To the major studios and scores of production workers who are losing their jobs, he’s the face of a strike that is inflicting collateral damage.

“I just lay back and look at the havoc I’ve wreaked,” Young quipped, only half joking, during an interview last week at his office at WGA West Coast headquarters in the Fairfax district. “They [the studios] don’t care for the fact that I tried to build as much strength for our side as possible. I’m not going to apologize for that.”

The question is whether Young can move beyond the protests and pickets to negotiate the kind of deal members now expect and bring a speedy end to the strike. Although he is widely credited for his organizing prowess, critics say Young’s inexperience in Hollywood bargaining, and his aggressive tactics and bravado, may be standing in the way of a deal.

“If they think success is putting thousands of people out of work, I’m appalled,” said Nick Counter, the chief negotiator for the studios. “They should spend more time finding a solution they can give us. . . . The only way they can do that is to put down their picket signs and come back to work and abandon their take-it-or-leave-it bargaining stance.”

Young said the union remained open to talks even as picketing continued. “The notion that negotiations stop because there’s a strike is not only counterintuitive, it’s senseless,” he said.

Dave Smith, a labor economist at Pepperdine University, gives Young high marks for his handling of the strike so far.

“He’s done a good job of advancing his goals, just in terms of the number of shows that have stopped,” Smith said. “He’s put himself into a better position to gain leverage in negotiations.” But “he has to show good faith in negotiating a deal, and that he’s not just bent on creating economic damage.”

Attempts to hash out a last-minute deal with studios a week ago fell apart. Each side blamed the other for the breakdown, fueled by disputes over how much writers should be paid for shows sold or rerun on the Internet, cellphones and other devices.

Young’s detractors say he was itching for a strike and has spent too much time preparing for one and not enough time trying to avert one. This is the first time he has negotiated a major entertainment industry contract.

“If his negotiation skills matched his organizational skills, we wouldn’t be in this mess that we’re in,” said entertainment industry attorney Alan Brunswick, who represents film and TV production companies and talent agencies.

Young’s backers, however, say he is a tough and capable negotiator and blame Counter for missing a key opportunity to avert a strike after writers dropped a demand calling for their DVD pay to be doubled.

“They took our most major concession and gave us nothing in return and then acted like we had done something wrong,” said Oscar-winning writer and guild board member Ron Bass (“Rain Man”).

Counter said studios in fact had offered higher minimum pay rates and other concessions and were making progress in several areas, including pay rates for streaming of shows online, when East Coast writers declared a strike. “We were totally blindsided,” he said.

Young said he had warned Counter that strike plans would proceed unless significant progress was made.

A week later, both sides have only hardened their positions, setting the stage for what many believe could be a long, debilitating walkout.

Last week thousands of pickets rallied outside of more than 15 film and TV studios, from the iconic Melrose Avenue gates of Paramount Pictures to NBC’s corporate headquarters in New York’s Rockefeller Center.

Without writers, at least nine shows, including such hits as ABC’s “Desperate Housewives,” NBC’s “The Office” and CBS’ “Two and a Half Men” shut down production. Many favorite talk shows also went into reruns, including “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno.”

In retaliation, many of the major studios suspended contracts with television production companies that are run by top writers, throwing hundreds of people, from assistants to development executives, out of work.

Last week’s events are just the beginning. On Tuesday actors are set to hold their own rally outside Universal Studios, while East Coast guild members stage a protest at the New York Stock Exchange. The writers are targeting Wall Street to question what they say is media companies’ double standard: They want investors to enrich their values because of the new outlet for their entertainment content online even as they tell writers the economics of the Internet are uncertain. Young has plans for a massive march down famed Hollywood Boulevard on Nov. 20.

Young and his team have spent months preparing for this moment, borrowing heavily from his experience organizing and staging walkouts on behalf of garment workers, carpenters and construction laborers.

Before joining the guild in 2004, Young held various union jobs, including that of assistant national director of organizing for Unite, the strongest union in the garment industry, where he led a high-profile campaign against jeans maker Guess Inc. in Los Angeles.

The Pasadena native, a onetime plumber and graduate of San Diego State, also served as a statewide labor organizer for carpenters.

Young was working as a director of organizing at the Writers Guild when he was tapped to replace John McLean, a former CBS executive, who was fired in 2005 by guild directors after animation writer Patric M. Verrone and his slate swept control of the union on a campaign to take a harder line in negotiations.

Young transformed the guild’s culture from a somewhat insular artists group to a more traditional, activist union focused on growing its base. The guild began using confrontational tactics more associated with blue-collar unions, such as having members disrupt industry forums to protest the treatment of writers on reality TV shows who are not part of the guild. The tactics rankled veteran writers who believed that they were counterproductive and also put Young sharply at odds with Counter, with whom he has repeatedly clashed.

Attempts to expand the union’s power base and gain leverage in negotiations by recruiting new members sometimes backfired. The guild’s much-vaunted campaign to extend pay and benefits to writers in reality TV stumbled last year when a guild-backed strike against the CW’s “America’s Next Top Model” failed to spark an industrywide walkout. Writers lost their jobs and the guild found itself in a turf war with another union representing editors.

Young has been more successful at what he calls internal organizing -- mobilizing rank-and-file union members who previously felt marginalized. He and Verrone held dozens of meetings and house parties with small groups of writers over the last year to discuss their concerns.

Young then set up a network composed of 400 bargaining captains, each of whom was responsible for communicating with 15 to 20 members. The group leaders, who now serve as strike captains, have played key roles in securing the large turnouts at last week’s rallies and in the recent strike authorization election by members.

“That’s how you move 8,000 people into action,” Young said.

Additionally, Young and Verrone courted the guild’s’ most powerful members, the writer-producers who are also known as show runners because they oversee prime-time TV programs.

“We had sort of lost touch with them as members,” Young said.

Last year, he set up a series of meetings with show runners of leading TV series to discuss their concerns about having to write short Web episodes of their programs for no additional pay. He established an annual dinner for top writers.

The efforts paid off when more than 100 show runners from such popular series as “Lost” and “CSI” rallied outside the gates of Walt Disney Studios on Wednesday. Even though they could be performing “producer” services during a strike without violating guild rules, most refused to cross the picket lines, shutting down some productions. Now, studio bosses in many cases are threatening to sue them for not showing up to work and have sent letters suspending their production deals.

Whether Young can keep the show runners united will be a key test. Show runners’ desire to return to work helped bring an end to the last writers strike, in 1988.

The show runners have not been Young’s only weapon against the studios. He also forged alliances with other powerful unions, including the Teamsters, for which he was a former organizer. A month before negotiations began in July, Young met Teamsters President James Hoffa to get the union’s support. Local Teamsters leaders have urged their members not to cross picket lines.

Young also reached out to the Screen Actors Guild, which shares many of the same concerns as writers. Many high-profile celebrities, including Sally Field, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Steve Carell, supported writers on the picket lines last week. The actors’ contract expires June 30.

Efforts to build solidarity haven’t worked with all unions, however. Young has clashed with Tom Short, head of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, which represents technical workers on film and TV crews. Short accused Young of trying to encroach on his union’s turf by organizing workers in reality television who are covered under Short’s union.

The writers also could be undercut if the Directors Guild of America follows its historical practice of striking an early deal with the studios long before its contract expires June 30.

At the moment, Young appears to enjoy widespread support among his members.

“Young’s background as a labor organizer has contributed to making this a strike with real power and force behind it,” said writer-director Bill Condon (“Dreamgirls”), who is on the WGA negotiating committee.

Supporters say attempts to portray Young as militant are off base, and that he is a skilled negotiator who was forced to take a stand.

“He’s extremely well prepared and he understands the issues,” guild board member Bass said. “He’s a strong, fearless guy.”

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[email protected]

[email protected]

Times staff writer Lorenza Munoz contributed to this report.

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Begin text of infobox

David J. Young

Age: 48

Title: Chief negotiator for the Writers Guild of America; executive director, Writers Guild of America, West

Born: Pasadena

Education: BA in economics, San Diego State

Previous jobs: Director of organizing, Writers Guild of America, West; assistant national director of organizing for Unite, a major union in the garment industry