America’s Next Top Union

Reality-show writers demand a “Model” employer.

By Miranda Nelson, University of Chicago and Nichole Bauer, George Mason University

When the CW television network denied the writers of “America’s Next Top Model” (ANTM) the right to form a union, it not only made the mistake of interfering with our weekly dose of television melodrama, it also brought workers’ rights to the fore for the catwalk-themed reality show’s 5.3 million viewers, many of them college students. Young Americans often assume that unions are outdated and irrelevant to their lives, and associate unions with factory workers marching in a picket line. So the strike of the “Top Model 12”—highly educated, creative twenty-somethings—represents a departure from many people’s perception of labor organizing.

This strike illustrates that people in a variety of professions, whether they’re janitors in Chicago, nurses in Boise, or reality television writers in Los Angeles, want the same things—to be treated with respect and to earn a decent living for hard work. Unions are a way to achieve these goals. As college students entering the professional workforce saddled with huge amounts of debt—an average of $19,000—we have every reason to be concerned about the erosion of workers’ rights today.

The writers’ demands are basic and conform to industry standards: They want health insurance, a pension plan, a wage minimum, job security, and residuals—a portion of the profits from re-airings of ANTM episodes. The writers of other CW programs such as “Gilmore Girls” and “7 th Heaven” are unionized and receive all of these benefits. And it’s not just writers at other CW shows who receive union recognition. Even other ANTM employees are unionized, from the editing staff to supermodel-turned-host Tyra Banks, who is a member of the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. The ANTM writers are simply asking for parity.

It’s not as though the writers are behaving like the hissy-fit throwing wannabe models featured on ANTM. They simply want respect for their valuable and hard work. Yes, reality shows have writers – we all know that it takes creative talent to coax all of that spontaneity out of real people. Network executives take advantage of the fact that reality writers do not function in the exact manner as writers of traditional scripted shows, giving them sneaky, ambiguous titles such as “associate producer.”

ANTM Writer Clint Catalyst has written several novels. Daniel J. Blau co-wrote a musical. As Blau explained in an interview with the blog Television Without Pity, the writers, or “associate producers,” prepare a script for Banks, search for plotlines, and craft minute-by-minute accounts of each episode, transforming ANTM into the 42 minutes of drama filled footage we tune in to each week. The writers are a pivotal part of the show; without them, there would be mind-numbing hours of the models eating cereal, tying their shoelaces, and brushing their teeth.

ANTM writers chose to show their support for unionization through a democratic, fair, and increasingly popular process called “card check.” Under card check, employees sign cards that indicate their desire to have a union; when a 51 percent majority is reached, the employer recognizes the union and the bargaining begins. It’s simple and effective—especially when 100 percent of workers want a union, as is the case with ANTM. Card check is widely used, with companies as large as Cingular Wireless recognizing their employees’ union through this process. In addition, the ANTM editors’ union was recognized using card check.

But according to Executive Producer Ken Mok, the writers failed to receive union recognition because they did not go through a union election monitored by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). An NLRB election is a red-tape-riddled stalling tactic that requires a burdensome amount of coordination, time, and money to get a union approved. Elections can take 90 days to a year, at which time the current season of ANTM will have wrapped and the writers will have gone home. According to a study by American Rights at Work, a national workers’ rights advocacy group, where the authors of this article interned this summer, elections tend to skew the process in favor of the employer by leaving workers vulnerable to harassment and intimidation from their employers. Shouldn’t the fighting and drama take place on the show, not behind the scenes?

 
Miranda Nelson is a senior at the University of Chicago. Nichole Bauer is a graduate student at George Mason University. They were summer 2006 interns at American Rights at Work.

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