Willimon Elected WGA East President
September 19, 2017 | 05:11PM PT
Beau Willimon, the playwright and showrunner who launched Netflix’s “House of Cards,” has been elected to a two-year term as president of the Writers Guild of America East, following an unopposed campaign to succeed Michael Winship.
The results were announced Tuesday evening in New York. Incumbent vice president Jeremy Pikser and secretary-treasurer Bob Schneider were also re-elected after running unopposed.
Winners of the six open Freelance seats are incumbents Bonnie Datt, Susan Kim, and Courtney Simon along with Amy Sohn, Tracey Scott Wilson, and David Simon. Andrea Ciannavei, the runner-up for the six open Freelance Council seats, was elected to a one-year term on the council to fill the vacancy created by Willimon’s election as president.
Incumbent Phil Pilato was re-elected for an open Staff seat along with Kim Kelly and Hamilton Nolan.
Willimon and five other incumbents won re-election to two-year terms for council seats last year. He was on the negotiating committee that reached an 11th hour deal with production companies on May 1.
Winship opted not to seek re-election this year. He succeeded Chris Albers as WGA East president in 2007 and was elected to four subsequent two-year terms. Winship guided the guild through the 100-day strike in 2007-2008 and helped steer it through the contract negotiations that went down to the wire — and sparked a strike authorization vote, this past spring.
The WGA East has about 4,000 members working in films and TV. It has managed in recent years to organize an array of staffs at New York-based news web sites, including the Huffington Post, Slate, and ThinkProgress.
The WGA West announced its election results Monday night with David Goodman replacing Howard Rodman as the president. Goodman also ran unopposed.
Okay his election was in the Cards! Hopefully it will be a good deal for all involved.
Arl
The Ol’ SAG Watchdog
*Headline photo selected by the Watch-dealer