looks ANGELES -- A dozen striking T...

looks ANGELES -- A dozen striking TV workers are demanding their bosse face reality.

The "America's nearest Top Model" employees contend that their tasks forward the series should be classified as writing and earn them the union pay and benefits they're not getting in their real-life drama.

The strike is the latest and mostly aggressive move in the western branch of Writers Guild of America's two-year effort to unionize reality TV

Sara Sluke and Kai Bowe, who have been picketing outside the offices of "America's nearest Top Model" since walking disclosed more than two weeks ago, say they're not claiming to create dialogue for contestants and are eager to dispel that assumption. "There pretends to be this idea that we fe lines to the girls and that we really do manipulate the actual shooting. That is not conformable to fact at all," Sluke said.

Instead, the striking staffers -- whose piece of work titles are show producer or associate point out producer, and who collectively are known as "the story department" -- are responsible for distilling about 200 hours of raw footage into a cohesive and dramatic episode.

After an outline is drafted, the writers scrutinize the footage and single out "line by line how to best reveal the story and craft it to a 41-minute episode with a beginning, middle and end" she said.

That makes them eligible for writers guild representation and benefits they now lack, including health insurance, pensions, wage minimums, residuals and credits, Bowe and Sluke said.

CW a merger of UPN (which now airs "America's nearest Top Model") and WB, issued a concise statement: "We expect these issues to be resolv in the near futurity and the show remains upon track for its Sept. 20 launch forward the CW," the network said.

Union efforts to organize reality writers began in 2004 as the booming genre displaced scripted fare. About 1000 reality writers have signed "recognition cards" attesting they want union representation, said Patric M Verrone guild president.

Copyright CHICAGO SUN-TIMES 2006

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