Lowell Peterson‘s tenure as executive director of the Writers Guild of America East was destined to be bookended by strikes. After 15 years at the helm, Peterson will step down from his post as of Nov. 15 when his current three-year contract expires.
WGA East leaders credited Peterson with nearly doubling the size of its membership and rebuilding the union’s staff and infrastructure since he took the helm in May 2008. That was three months after the Writers Guild of America concluded a 100-day strike against Hollywood’s largest employees. News of his resignation comes one day after members of the WGA West and WGA East overwhelmingly ratified a new three-year contract that was the byproduct of a 148-day strike. The hard-won pact delivers enormous gains for union members, albeit at great cost after a five-month work stoppage.
“We thank Lowell for his years of service to the Writers Guild of America East and his dedication to the cause of organized labor,” said Lisa Takeuchi Cullen, the WGA East’s newly elected president. “Lowell came to our union at a transformational time. Over his tenure, he helped facilitate significant changes in the Guild’s membership and agenda. We wish him all success going forward.”
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Peterson, who was a partner and labor specialist with the firm of Meyer, Suozzi, English & Klein before joining the guild, characterized the decision to move on from WGA East as entirely amicable.
“It felt like time for me,” Peterson told Variety. “I’ve accomplished a lot. When I got there in 2008, it was clear to me the industry was transforming. I didn’t predict what would happen but it was clear that something fundamental was at work. I concluded that we’d better make sure that guild stays relevant, and that means changing the way we do our work.”
The WGA East will launch a search for Peterson’s permanent successor. As of Nov. 16, Geoff Betts, the guild’s director of contract enforcement and credits, will serve as Interim Executive Director.
Among the hallmarks of Peterson’s leadership was driving the WGA East to step up organizing efforts among writers working for East Coast-based digital media platforms, such as Vice Media, Vox Media’s many brands, Salon, Huffington Post, Hearst Magazines, Gizmodo Media Group, Bustle Digital Group and Fast Company.
But the fast expansion of the membership base led to some growing pains for the WGA East. The union’s old guard of screenwriters, TV writers and showrunners became concerned about the unintended consequences of an influx of new members who work in a significantly different business than writing for film and TV, and usually for lower wages than scripted film and TV scribes command.
In April 2022, the guild unveiled a compromise agreement that divides power among three basic sectors: Film/TV/Streaming, Broadcast/Cable/Streaming News and Online Media. Each sector gets a seat on the WGA East’s governing council. Voting for contracts and strike authorization votes is also divided by sector. The WGA East counts more than 7,100 members at present, compared to about 4,000 when Peterson took the helm. There’s been chatter about the Online Media sector eventually spinning off into a separate entity that still falls under the WGA East umbrella. Peterson discounted that idea and said he was gratified by the accord reached last year after a lot of discourse and study among various WGA East members.
“I think there’s probably plenty of commonality between the sectors. There are people who move between sectors,” Peterson said. “Most importantly, the compromise underscores that people will pay attention to their own sector’s interests, which was going to happen anyway. But this puts a punctuation mark on it. I think that was an elegant solution. Nobody has to worry about it.”
Peterson plans to take time off and regroup before he seeks other opportunities in the labor arena. His years at WGA East provided an education in how to engage union members and make the guild a more important factor in their lives. That’s hard to do in the mostly freelance, project-by-project system of employment in Hollywood.
“There isn’t that natural, permanent workplace where everybody gathers,” Peterson said. “You have to make opportunities and make sure people recognize that the union is relevant. That’s the biggest thing that was different” about working for a union rooted in the media and entertainment business, he continued.
The staunch support among WGA East members for the strike that ended Sept. 26 is an example of the unique qualities of the Writers Guild on both coasts. There is immense appreciation for the gains fought for in union contracts by previous generations of scribes at all levels.
“There are a lot of highly paid showrunners who are actually among the most committed guild members. They recognize that it’s good to pay back, and that if their predecessors, the elites of their day, hadn’t done that then their own careers would have been very different. So there’s that political commitment,” Peterson said. “And there are a huge number of members who are not wealthy and those are the ones we’ve had to fight hardest to protect.”
Among other achievements, Peterson pointed with pride to the WGA East’s key role in supporting legislation in New York state to establish a $5 million production tax credit to incentivize producers to hire a broadly diverse creative team and crew. The effort was an uphill climb from 2016 until December 2019 when then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo finally signed it into law.
Peterson also cited the growth of the WGA East’s staff of union organizers, contract specialists and other specialized skills that benefit union members.
“I feel proud of having been able to do all this. I’ve got a great staff. They’re people who are smart and work really hard. They’re committed,” he said. “I feel like I’m leaving on a very high note.”
