As Obscure as an Extra, She Has a Lead Role in Hollywood’s Labor Fight

As the Hollywood union strikes have dragged on, key characters have taken turns within the highlight.

There is Fran Drescher, the comedic actress who, with shocking ferocity, has rallied the actors’ union towards tv and movie corporations, and enraged studio executives within the course of. Robert A. Iger, who leads Disney, publicly pushed again towards the placing employees, and located himself jeered on picket traces as a robber baron.

But one essential participant has remained an enigma: Carol Lombardini, 68, the highest union negotiator for studios and a 41-year veteran of Hollywood labor battles.

For somebody who sits on the heart of two more and more bitter strikes — writers walked off the job on May 2, adopted by actors on July 14 — little or no is thought about her. Ms. Lombardini has not given an interview of quite a lot of phrases since 2009, when she ascended from the No. 2 job to turn out to be president of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, the group that bargains on behalf of the eight largest leisure corporations.

Until now, her tenure had been marked by labor peace. Studios reached an settlement with the administrators’ union in June; the writers final struck in 2008, the actors in 1980. Over the years, she has informed colleagues that cultivating a public persona would solely undercut her effectiveness on the bargaining desk. Or a minimum of it could not assist. She declined to remark for this text.

Wanted or not, the highlight has discovered her. Many union members blame her for the negotiating logjam that has introduced nearly all film and tv manufacturing in Hollywood to a halt. Partly due to her woman-of-mystery persona and partly as a result of she’s a straightforward goal, Ms. Lombardini has turn out to be an avatar for the grievances of tens of hundreds of placing employees. “Carol can go kick rocks,” Caroline Renard, a placing author, stated this month on X, the social media platform previously generally known as Twitter.

With her public character absent, actors and writers have invented one. In May, somebody began a parody account on X that has portrayed Ms. Lombardini as a crass tyrant declaring, “I’m a goddess of chaos!” (Yes, she has seen it, an affiliate stated. No, she isn’t amused.)

Another group of screenwriters have mocked Ms. Lombardini on-line as a fuddy-duddy who hangs out at chain eating places, the taunt being that no Hollywood particular person can be caught lifeless in a single. (Her workplace is close to a Cheesecake Factory in suburban Los Angeles.)

Other union members appear to have merely grown curious in regards to the Oz-like negotiator behind the scenes. “Will we ever find out what Carol Lombardini is in the flesh?!” Maridia Minor, a author, requested on X final week.

A number of info are identified about Ms. Lombardini. She is a loyal baseball fan. She grew up in a working-class city outdoors Boston. And in fact, she has monumental energy. Ms. Lombardini is chargeable for negotiating all 58 of Hollywood’s union agreements, from contracts with the Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA, because the actors’ union is thought, to ones with the American Federation of Musicians and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. How she handles herself — union officers who’ve negotiated together with her describe her as blunt but cordial — could make the distinction between easy talks and a strike.

Jeff Ruthizer, who spent 40 years as a labor negotiator at Disney, ABC and NBC and just lately wrote a e book, “Labor Pains,” drawing on that have, known as Ms. Lombardini “a funny person” who “knows how to read a room and is tough when she needs to be.”

At the top of the day, nonetheless, Ms. Lombardini is an worker, albeit one whose duties require deft ego administration. She solutions to moguls like Mr. Iger of Disney and Ted Sarandos of Netflix, who aren’t used to managing by committee. The different alliance members are NBCUniversal, Apple, Warner Bros. Discovery, Amazon, Paramount Global and Sony Pictures. Ms. Lombardini advises them on a plan of action, however they finally determine on a technique after which she does their bidding.

In late July, as an example, some firm leaders pressed Ms. Lombardini to reopen negotiations with the Writers Guild. (The two sides had not met since early May.) While not adamantly opposed, Ms. Lombardini expressed skepticism; she was not satisfied that the Writers Guild was prepared to melt its stance, in keeping with two studio chiefs and one studio labor lawyer concerned within the talks, who spoke on the situation of anonymity to debate non-public conversations. Ultimately, the businesses directed her to re-engage with the writers.

The subsequent talks have gone poorly, with the Writers Guild holding agency to calls for associated to staffing minimums in tv writers’ rooms and transparency into streaming-service viewership, amongst others. Frustrated, studio leaders informed Ms. Lombardini on Tuesday to launch the small print of their sweetened proposal — which included increased wages, a pledge to share some viewership knowledge and extra protections round using synthetic intelligence — to the news media. It was basically a technique to go across the guild’s negotiating committee and enchantment to rank-and-file members.

In a message to its 11,500 members on Thursday, the Writers Guild stated it was “undeterred by this latest tactic.”

The Writers Guild declined to debate Ms. Lombardini. Other unions did the identical. (SAG-AFTRA, whose contract covers tens of hundreds of film and tv actors, has not returned to the bargaining desk in additional than six weeks.) It seems, nonetheless, that union leaders have a grudging respect for her.

“She’s been around a long time, and she knows what she’s doing, and she commands a lot of respect as well,” Lindsay Dougherty, the lead Teamsters organizer in Hollywood, stated in an interview with an leisure commerce news publication final 12 months.

“I think she’s a fair individual,” Ms. Dougherty added. (Teamsters symbolize drivers, casting administrators and animal handlers, amongst different Hollywood specialties.)

Ms. Lombardini, an avid Red Sox and Dodgers fan, had a working-class upbringing in Framingham, Mass., and was impressed to turn out to be a lawyer by studying articles about F. Lee Bailey, in keeping with an affiliate. After getting a bachelor’s diploma in Renaissance historical past from the University of Chicago and a regulation diploma from Stanford, she began her profession at regulation corporations in Los Angeles, specializing in labor by happenstance after one agency moved her from its quiet trusts and estates division to its bustling labor one.

She has labored on the studio alliance since its creation in 1982 and is married to William Cole, a outstanding labor lawyer whose shoppers have typically included studios.

“Carol has one of the most complicated jobs in Hollywood — and it’s growing even more so — but I think she clearly understands and appreciates the challenge,” stated Barry M. Meyer, a former Warner Bros. chairman who labored carefully with Ms. Lombardini. “It’s actually been an integral part of her life’s work.”

By all accounts, Ms. Lombardini is aware of varied union contracts chilly, which isn’t any small feat; the latest Writers Guild contract ran 740 pages. Ms. Lombardini isn’t a zealot within the negotiating room, in keeping with union officers who’ve sat throughout the desk from her, however she will be brusque and unyielding. In a letter to its members this month, the Writers Guild stated Ms. Lombardini wouldn’t have interaction on sure subjects. “Carol’s response — something she repeated three times during the meeting: ‘People just want to get back to work.’”

In the previous, studio leaders have prized her effectivity. “Carol has done a very good job this past year,” Kevin Tsujihara, who was the Warner Bros. chairman, wrote in a 2014 e-mail that was made public as a part of the Sony Pictures hack, noting that she had just lately concluded six negotiations.

“There was no public drama and all were concluded within parameters we had established,” Mr. Tsujihara wrote. He really useful a bonus of $365,000, or 30 p.c of her wage, which he listed as $1.2 million.

The job has turn out to be far more tough. For a begin, the studio alliance’s comparatively current additions of Apple, Netflix and Amazon have made its priorities extra diversified and unwieldy than prior to now. The unions have grown extra aggressive. And bargaining points — the rise of synthetic intelligence, as an example, and its potential to disrupt the inventive course of — have turn out to be extra advanced.

“She has to unify the various views of the studios and get everyone to agree,” Mr. Ruthizer, the labor lawyer, stated. “And then she has the other job of negotiating with the other side of the table.”

“The challenge now is greater than she’s ever seen,” he added. “It’s bigger than anybody has ever seen.”