Petrie inscribed as WGA West chief
Petrie re-elected WGAW president in landslide vote
SepT 22, 2004
WGA West president Dan Petrie Jr. was re-elected by a wide margin Tuesday over challenger Eric Hughes, who forced the special election by protesting his defeat in the same race a year ago.
Petrie received 1,506 votes, or 71.3% of the 2,110 people who cast ballots. Hughes got 541 votes, or about 25.6%, in a contest that was closely monitored by the U.S. Department of Labor to ensure fairness and accuracy. The other 3% were for write-in candidates or left blank.
"The voters have expressed a strong vote of confidence in the guild, in the senior staff and toward our current course in negotiations," said Petrie, who was president from 1997-99 and has vowed to retire when this special one-year term expires in September 2005. "Eric was very honest and forthright about his point of view, but the results were pretty definitive that the membership did not want to go in the radical direction he was suggesting."
Hughes wanted to get rid of several senior staffers, particularly executive director John McLean, in a bid to bring in new leaders and outside talent. Hughes also wanted the union to take a more definitive stand at the bargaining table.
"I'm going to stay on topic and work for an honest union," Hughes said. "I promised from the beginning that I would continue to fight, and I think the issues I raised in this campaign are not going away and neither am I."
About 7,500 of WGAW's 9,000 members were eligible to vote, and 2,110 of them returned ballots -- a figure said to be unusually high for a presidential election.
Results from the vp race between incumbent Carl Gottlieb and current board member Dennis Feldman as well as the eight open board seats were not expected to be final until today. Those contests were not subject to government supervision.
The WGA East, meanwhile, postponed all election results until Oct. 8 because some eligible ballots were mixed with those set aside as ineligible because they lacked a signature on the outer envelope. The voters who cast those 16 eligible ballots will be asked to vote again.
WGAW has seen its share of election controversy over the past year, beginning with Hughes' complaints about his loss to Victoria Riskin in September 2003.
That protest sparked an investigation that found Riskin had been ineligible to run. She resigned in January and was replaced by vp Charles Holland, who was soon under fire for claims he had made about his background. By March, Holland was replaced by Petrie, and the union agreed to rerun the presidential election under the auspices of the DOL.
Jeffrey Gitomer, head of the DOL's Office of Labor Management Standards in Los Angeles, helped supervise the ballot count.
"We have had an open, cordial and cooperative working relationship throughout the period of the DOL's oversight of the election," WGAW's McLean said. "We found their participation helpful to the process."
As part of the settlement with the DOL, Hughes was guaranteed a spot on the ballot if he wanted it.
An outsider who vowed to bring "truth for a change," Hughes focused his attacks on both Petrie and guild staff for their handling of the now-stalled contract negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers.
While Hughes ran alone, Petrie, Gottlieb and eight board candidates banded together as "a stronger guild." That slate emphasized its support of the guild's current negotiating strategy, which Petrie helped author.
Most of the WGAW campaigning took place online through the presidential candidates' Web sites and in a members-only forum on the union's site. Being writers, the voters also heavily relied on the 120-page voter guild mailed out with the ballot.
The contest featured only one public event, a meet-the-candidates night Sept. 1 that drew a relatively strong crowd of about 150 to WGAW's headquarters in Hollywood. Like all aspects of the election, that event also was monitored by the DOL.
The unresolved negotiations were the overriding issue of the election.
Bargaining broke down in June when the AMPTP refused to offer an increase in DVD residuals, leaving writers to continue working without a contract because a strike would be too costly at this time.
The writers are awaiting the outcome of similar negotiations by the DGA, who it is hoped will use their increased clout to force the networks and major studios to concede on the DVD issue. The DGA talks resume Thursday, the same day that SAG announces the results of its board elections.
SAG then plans to open negotiations with the AMPTP, raising the prospect of showdown among all three unions and the AMPTP.
Both Petrie and Hughes also focused on the credit arbitration process.
Petrie promised to create a panel of volunteers who would serve as arbitration advisers while separately having a blue-ribbon committee evaluate the staff's credit arbitration process.
"I hope to put all those things in motion, but I don't think it can all be accomplished in a year," Petrie said. "We looked very hard at this election and what went wrong with the last election, and now it's probably time to broaden the scope of the governance committee to take a look in general at our procedures and the constitution and whether it needs to be changed."
Petrie received 1,506 votes, or 71.3% of the 2,110 people who cast ballots. Hughes got 541 votes, or about 25.6%, in a contest that was closely monitored by the U.S. Department of Labor to ensure fairness and accuracy. The other 3% were for write-in candidates or left blank.
"The voters have expressed a strong vote of confidence in the guild, in the senior staff and toward our current course in negotiations," said Petrie, who was president from 1997-99 and has vowed to retire when this special one-year term expires in September 2005. "Eric was very honest and forthright about his point of view, but the results were pretty definitive that the membership did not want to go in the radical direction he was suggesting."
Hughes wanted to get rid of several senior staffers, particularly executive director John McLean, in a bid to bring in new leaders and outside talent. Hughes also wanted the union to take a more definitive stand at the bargaining table.
"I'm going to stay on topic and work for an honest union," Hughes said. "I promised from the beginning that I would continue to fight, and I think the issues I raised in this campaign are not going away and neither am I."
About 7,500 of WGAW's 9,000 members were eligible to vote, and 2,110 of them returned ballots -- a figure said to be unusually high for a presidential election.
Results from the vp race between incumbent Carl Gottlieb and current board member Dennis Feldman as well as the eight open board seats were not expected to be final until today. Those contests were not subject to government supervision.
The WGA East, meanwhile, postponed all election results until Oct. 8 because some eligible ballots were mixed with those set aside as ineligible because they lacked a signature on the outer envelope. The voters who cast those 16 eligible ballots will be asked to vote again.
WGAW has seen its share of election controversy over the past year, beginning with Hughes' complaints about his loss to Victoria Riskin in September 2003.
That protest sparked an investigation that found Riskin had been ineligible to run. She resigned in January and was replaced by vp Charles Holland, who was soon under fire for claims he had made about his background. By March, Holland was replaced by Petrie, and the union agreed to rerun the presidential election under the auspices of the DOL.
Jeffrey Gitomer, head of the DOL's Office of Labor Management Standards in Los Angeles, helped supervise the ballot count.
"We have had an open, cordial and cooperative working relationship throughout the period of the DOL's oversight of the election," WGAW's McLean said. "We found their participation helpful to the process."
As part of the settlement with the DOL, Hughes was guaranteed a spot on the ballot if he wanted it.
An outsider who vowed to bring "truth for a change," Hughes focused his attacks on both Petrie and guild staff for their handling of the now-stalled contract negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers.
While Hughes ran alone, Petrie, Gottlieb and eight board candidates banded together as "a stronger guild." That slate emphasized its support of the guild's current negotiating strategy, which Petrie helped author.
Most of the WGAW campaigning took place online through the presidential candidates' Web sites and in a members-only forum on the union's site. Being writers, the voters also heavily relied on the 120-page voter guild mailed out with the ballot.
The contest featured only one public event, a meet-the-candidates night Sept. 1 that drew a relatively strong crowd of about 150 to WGAW's headquarters in Hollywood. Like all aspects of the election, that event also was monitored by the DOL.
The unresolved negotiations were the overriding issue of the election.
Bargaining broke down in June when the AMPTP refused to offer an increase in DVD residuals, leaving writers to continue working without a contract because a strike would be too costly at this time.
The writers are awaiting the outcome of similar negotiations by the DGA, who it is hoped will use their increased clout to force the networks and major studios to concede on the DVD issue. The DGA talks resume Thursday, the same day that SAG announces the results of its board elections.
SAG then plans to open negotiations with the AMPTP, raising the prospect of showdown among all three unions and the AMPTP.
Both Petrie and Hughes also focused on the credit arbitration process.
Petrie promised to create a panel of volunteers who would serve as arbitration advisers while separately having a blue-ribbon committee evaluate the staff's credit arbitration process.
"I hope to put all those things in motion, but I don't think it can all be accomplished in a year," Petrie said. "We looked very hard at this election and what went wrong with the last election, and now it's probably time to broaden the scope of the governance committee to take a look in general at our procedures and the constitution and whether it needs to be changed."
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