jhermAs promised, here’s the story of the pricey pamphleteer.

Before I get started, here’s a little background for those of you who haven’t been following the exciting serialized story known as “The WGA’s Fight To Organize Reality TV.”

In 2004, Patric Verrone began a crusade to organize the workers of reality television.  He was not President at the time, but he was an officer of the WGAw and the chairman of the Organizing Committee.  David Young was not the Executive Director at the time, but the head of the Organizing Department.

Here’s how Patric’s theory went.

In order to get a good contract for writers like, say, me, the WGA needed a better strike threat.  In order to have an effective strike threat, the WGA needed to take away the wedge of non-union reality television, which would help fill programming hours during a WGA strike. In order to take the wedge of non-union reality television away, the WGA needed to unionize the people who made reality television and bring them in under the WGA MBA. In order to unionize the people who made reality television, the WGA would have to step away from its traditional role of representing people who create “literary material” as defined in our constitution, and start representing people who didn’t…like producer-editors, story producers or, well, just editors. And in order to represent all of those people, the WGA needed to do what it’s never done before and get a “union standards” clause, which would bind the companies to require all of their suppliers to be union shops. And in order to get alllllll of that….the WGA needed to run a corporate campaign which would attack the companies, in order to alternatively shame and pressure them into signing over all of reality to the Guild.

Oh, and somewhere in there, I think we had to start breeding unicorns and farting pixie dust, but I was always sketchy on that part.

In 2005, Patric became President. David Young became Executive Director, and David brought in his old boss from his seamstress union days to be the head of organizing. That man, Jeff Hermanson, was subsequently elevated to the number two position at the Guild, assistant executive director.

Since 2004/2005, here’s what Patric, David and Jeff have accomplished in the effort to organize reality television into the WGA.

Nothing.

Zero.

Well, let me take that back, because it’s not exactly true.  We have accomplished some things.

  • We convinced the writers of America’s Next Top Model to go on strike. The strike failed, those writers lost their jobs, and ANTM hasn’t employed a single writer since.

  • We personally antagonized some of the people we have to negotiate with (Les Moonves and Dawn Ostroff come to mind) without actually achieving anything other than ill will as a result.

  • We launched DOA websites protesting product integration that we were told would “go viral.” Hint: if you design something to go viral, it almost certainly won’t.  No exception here.

  • We hired dozens, if not more, new staff members to help achieve our organizing goals.

  • We bussed and flew and housed lots of people to San Francisco and Puerto Rico in an effort to stop people from watching American Idol.

  • We spent millions and millions of dollars, all provided by the dues of working writers.

  • Last but not least, we actually did strike without having reality under our contract. And even though Verrone had suggested this would make us a toothless dog, we proved that we don’t need reality.

Here’s what we haven’t done.

We haven’t organized a single true reality show1, much less an entire production company or network or industry.

Not one. In four years.

After millions of dollars.

So…what to do?  Time to abide by the old Einsteinian saw and cease doing the same thing, expecting a different result?

Nope.

You see, this reality organizing strategy refuses to die.  You can shoot it, stab it, feed it poisoned cakes and throw it into the icy river, but like Rasputin, it just won’t go down.

Unlike Rasputin or the Terminator, it doesn’t try and sway your monarchs or kill Sarah Connor.

It just eats money.

Day after day, week after week, fiscal year after fiscal year…this beast burns through our dues, accomplishing nothing, making no dent…

But you came to find out about the pamphleteer.

A few weeks ago, Jeff Hermanson, along with three other staffers, was arrested at the Hollywood & Highland Mall for handing out fliers protesting American Idol. The charges were likely baloney…trespassing or what have you. But that’s not what caught my eye.  What caught my eye was that Hermanson was out there doing this.  Still.

Union staff salaries are public record.  Jeff Hermanson makes about a hundred and fifty grand, and this is what we have him doing?  Standing on corners handing out leaflets?  Is that what it’s come to?  The number two staffer in our union is doing something that pointless, that ineffective, that useless?

I’m sure the arrest itself was something of a high note, as it might have given the whole affair a patina of old-time labor heroics, but the old-time labor heroes actually got stuff done.  We’re not.

Now I’ve taken many pains to suggest that people who actually do the job of writing on these shows are being mistreated.  They do deserve the benefits that come with union representation. That’s why we should drop this nonsense of using them as a strike wedge against the companies, and just do the job of organizing them show by show under a separate collective bargaining agreement.  By not doing that, we’re holding all of those people hostage to our own misguided strike strategy.

Meanwhile, we’re not only failing reality writers, but we’re failing our own members.  It takes TEN MILLION dollars of earned income to generate the dues to cover Mr. Hermanson’s salary each year.

Ten million dollars.

I should think that for the ten million dollars of earned income, we’d be getting someone who is spending his time either revamping a complete failure of a strategy, or creating a new and effective strategy for other areas we sorely need to organize, such as basic cable. But standing on a corner handing out pamphlets to tourists? Because we actually think that’s going to make a dent in American Idol’s ratings? Like zombies, the reality organizers keep stumbling through their old routines, not realizing they’ve been dead for years.

I submit that Jeff Hermanson is passing out fliers to anyone bored enough to reach for one because he really doesn’t know what the hell else to do.

It’s a sign, don’t you think?

As a dues-payer, I really feel like we deserve better.

Reality writers really really deserve better….and fast.

  1. There are certain variety game shows, like Smarter Than A 5th Grader, that we have organized, but they aren’t true reality programs like Survivor or American Idol or other shows that don’t feature a new contestant for each episode [↩]

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