Thursday, January 10, 2008

Warner Bros. will lay off up to 1,000 workers


The real reason the studios aren’t backing down to the writers who are striking against them is this. They want to cut out some of the fat from their organizations and what better time then now to assess who to lay off.

Up to 1,000 employees on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank could be laid off anytime after Friday. The studio distributed legally mandated warning notices on November 12, 2007 - which was five days after the Writers Guild of America walkout began, stating that recipients could be subject to layoff after 60 days. These notices represent a strong signal that the strike could trigger massive job cuts across Hollywood.

Warner Bros. has been very careful not to mention any numbers and Stacey Hoppe, a spokeswoman for the studio said that the notices given out to workers were mandated under the U.S. Department of Labor’s Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notifications (which is sensibly abbreviated as WARN.)

Hoppe said:

“These WARN notices were sent because, in certain circumstances, federal and California law can require employers to give notice of staffing changes,” “Due to the ongoing WGA work stoppage, some studio divisions will have to lay off employees. We regret the impact this will have on our employees, and we hope to bring them back to work once the WGA strike ends.”

Most of the people who received WARN notices were production workers and others involved in lot maintenance and facility management. News of this circulated yesterday which marked the 65th day of the WGA strike.

At other lots, cost-cutting measures have been taken. At Fox for example, overtime pay has been curtailed and TV productions have gotten rid of workers as TV shows have run out of scripts and shut down operations.

In addition, production companies such as Vertigo Entertainment (”The Grudge” and “The Ring“) have had their production pacts canceled by NBC Universal as a cost-cutting measure.


Visit DiversityJobs.com for information on Diversity in the workplace

Labels: ,