Veteran labor journalist disputes claims that producers are trying to break the WGA union. Or at least that its chief negotiator is.

Commentary by David Robb

HOLLYWOOD, CA (Hollywood Today) 12/18/07 — Nick Counter and I started our jobs the same week back in 1982 – he as the head of the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers, and me as the labor reporter at Daily Variety. I dealt with him frequently for the next 20 years – ten years at Variety and ten more years as the labor reporter for The Hollywood Reporter.

As the current writers’ strike drags on, the rhetoric is getting hotter and angrier about management’s “union busting tactics.”

“This feels like union-busting 101,” a writer wrote in a recent letter to the L.A. Times.

“NBC Universal is effectively union-busting,” wrote a blogger on the Daily Koz website.

“I fear union busting,” wrote another blogger. “It’s happening all over the place, and we’re not immune.”

Well, in the 20 years that I covered Nick Counter – in more than 50 major contract negotiations – he never once tried to bust the unions.

When you are a labor reporter, I think it helps to be pro-union. I don’t think you can do the job and be anti-union. That doesn’t mean you slant your stories one way or the other – it just means that you recognize and value the important role that honest trade unionism has had in humanizing the American workplace and in building a strong middle class.

And the thing I liked most about Nick Counter was that he was not anti-union.

Hollywood is the most unionized industry in the country – there is, literally, a union or guild for just about every job. And although Counter always drove a hard bargain during contract talks, he never tried to bust the unions. And that’s something that most unions elsewhere around the country cannot say. Can the unions representing workers in the automobile industry say that? No. The mining industry? No. Aerospace, steel, transportation? No, no, no.

When Hollywood’s unions come to the bargaining table with Nick Counter, they can expect a tough round of negotiations, but they do not have to fear that he’s going to try to bust the unions. And that attitude – and the goodwill it creates between labor and management – has got to be worth something.

Does it mean that the Writers Guild should give up its demand for a fair piece of the revenues from product shown on the Internet? No, of course not. But as the rhetoric heats up in the coming weeks, members of the Writers Guild should appreciate the fact that when this strike is over, there will still be a guild there to represent them.