WGA Leadership Re-Elected

Patric Verrone was re-elected as the president of the Writers Guild of America along with other members of the “Writers United” slate. Verrone and other officers and board members will serve for two years. Kathy Kiernan, the opponent for the Guild presidency, received 9.8 percent of the vote. Verrone, a television writer, received 90.2 percent of the 1,286 ballots case. The WGA election results were announced the day before talks were scheduled to resume between the union and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, the bargaining arm of the major Hollywood studios. The union enters the negotiations with our strongest position in decades, Verrone said. The two sides began talking in July but soon broke down over disagreements on how to compensate writers whose work is used in new media and DVDs.