LOS ANGELES - In a push to win union wages and benefits from producers, Hollywood writers are revealing one of the industry's secrets: Television reality shows are often as carefully scripted as any sitcom or crime drama.

The Writers Guild of America, west, is demanding that companies that produce shows such as "The Apprentice" and "Supernanny" provide union wages and benefits to people who sift through hundreds of hours of footage to craft story lines.

The WGA claims reality shows have become cash cows for the networks in large part because producers don't have to pay union wages and benefits.

The union says people who work on the shows are forced to put in long hours without days off and in some cases placed in dangerous conditions.

"They want to keep the fiction that it's not written so they don't have to pay us what they pay fiction writers," said Rebecca Hertz, a 28-year-old writer who has worked on shows such as "The Swan" on Fox and "Big Man on Campus" on the WB.

The WGA said it has received nearly 1,000 signed cards from reality TV workers requesting representation by the union.

Unlike a sitcom or drama, a reality show doesn't often employ "writers." Instead, people with titles such a "field producer" or "story producer" make sure each episode follows a script that's often conceived in advance.

In other cases, editors have the job of finding dramatic story lines in hundreds of hours of tape. Producers might boil down 400 hours of footage to create a single 44-minute episode of a show, said Jeff Bartsch, a 26-year-old editor.

"Audiences want to see conflict and resolution. They want to see a progression, to see the characters learn something," he said.

That process, argues the WGA, is called writing.

Writers, as well as directors and editors, have been pushing producers for years to pay union wages and benefits on reality shows. The WGA won a provision in the three-year contract it reached last year to negotiate with producers on a show-by-show basis for representation.

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