AMPTP: WGA is creating new blacklist

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 14 (UPI) -- Producers and networks say the Writers Guild of America is using scare tactics to keep members from crossing picket lines during the Hollywood writers strike.

"The WGA is using fear and intimidation to control its membership," said Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers President Nick Counter in a statement posted on the organization's Web site. "Asking members to inform on each other and creating a black list of those who question the tactics of the WGA leadership is as unacceptable today as it was when the WGA opposed these tactics in the 1950s."

The AMPTP said the statement was a response to comments by Dan Wilcox, the chairman of the WGA's Strike Rules Compliance Committee, regarding guild regulations requiring members to "inform the guild of the name of any writer you have reason to believe is engaged in strike-breaking activity or other scab writing."

The WGA said Counter's charge "is as offensive as it is untrue."

"To accuse the WGA of blacklisting, when it was we who suffered the most from it in the past, is simply Mr. Counter's desperate attempt to divert attention from the fact that it was he who walked out of the negotiations, and it is he who refuses every day to return to the table," the guild said. "The WGA has an offer on the table and is ready and willing to meet with the AMPTP any day, anywhere."