The next few weeks will see still more layoffs at WME Entertainment. (I've been told between 15 and 18.) But UTA already has snapped up longtime Endeavor talent agent Kevin Volchok who was let go from WME late Friday afternoon. Volchok met with UTA bigwigs on Saturday morning and by the end of the day had a deal to join the agency. The tenpercenter had worked for Adam Venit at CAA and then moved to Endeavor with Venit in 1996. He was promoted to agent in 1998 and built a list which includes Tracy Morgan, Adam Brody, Ron Livingston, Rob Corddry, Lauren German, Oscar Isaac, Eugene Levy, Anthony Mackie, Dominic Purcell, Amy Smart and Mark Valley. Most, if not all, are expected to follow Volchok to UTA, which continues to be the biggest beneficiary of the William Morris/Endeavor merger. (Or should I say the Endeavor takeover of Morris?)

I also hear that New York agent Bonnie Bernstein is out at WME. "A big deal," a source tells me. "She had a lot of good clients.)

2ND UPDATE: Writer/director Bryan Bertino has been one of Paradigm's biggest clients in its small motion picture lit department, but now he's left. (He also fired his manager Michael Connolly.) Sources now tell me it was "because he couldn't get his movie Green Eyes together that is in turnaround at Paramount even though he had Charlize Theron attached to star with Scott Rudin producing. No one would touch it because it is too small, too dark and too depressing." Anyway, he's heading to CAA.

3RD UPDATE: Paul Bricault is out. No definitive word yet on Jim Griffin. I hear he's still negotiating with WME.

2ND UPDATE: Sources are now telling me that WME may lay off another biggie -- Paul Bricault, former William Morris board member, EVP, and head of Morris Worldwide Consulting working over the years with MySpace, General Motors, Anheuser-Busch and others -- as soon as today. Everyone tells me that, like Jim Griffin, he's a good guy. Apparently, Endeavor's Mark Dowley will now run the WME consulting department.

UPDATE: I'm trying to confirm who's been laid off at WME this go-round. I'm told veteran Jim Griffin and WME are having difficulty coming to terms on a new contract, which is surprising. Because the former WMA board member with big clients –- he's best known for representing Regis Philbin and Emeril and making gobs of money for the Morris agency over the years -- was considered the highest grossing tenpercenter in the tenpercentery. (Emeril and Regis were both said to be at $40+ million+ a year, and Regis & Kelly is an agency package in this and all its previous permutations as well as Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?.) WME must have figured that all the money that needs to be made is already coming in. This is a very big deal internally. I'm hearing more names are in play. Stay tuned.

UPDATES WME Pay For Assistants Worse Than WMA

WME this week put in place that new pay schedule for WME assistants I told you was coming. The New York office's was announced first, followed by the Beverly Hills headquarters. "Can you believe they decided to break the news to us in a meeting disguised to discuss our new health insurance plans?" one BH source tells me. "And, of course, nothing in writing... Just a scale told to us nonchalantly." The new agency had to "recalculate" the pay for WMA assistants (about $13.50 an hour) to be more on par with Endeavor assistants (about $9.50 an hour). Manwhile, Endeavorites were earning more overtime tham WMAers.

So here's what begins August 1st:
Under 1 year - $11/hour
1 - 2 years - $12/hr
2 - 3 years $13/hr
Over 3 years - $14/hr
The pay increases $1/hr for every year over 3 that the assistant is employed.
Any raises from the end-of-year reviews have been taken off the table.
Official hours are from 9-7 PM and a 50-hour work week is expected.

There are faint rumblings of a walk-out, especially because the assistants tell me that they are taking on much more work. Needless to say, the famous UTA joblist is making the rounds especially among the majority of William Morris assistants who are taking a huge pay cut -- on average 20% to 35%! -- and sense that the ladder of opportunity for them no longer exists. The WMAers feel there is favoritism being shown the Endeavorites. They claim that whenever Ari Emanuel makes the rounds, he chats with many Endeavor assistants but does not take any time with the WMA assistants. It sounds petty, but this stuff does matter. On the other hand, not all th ese assistants are wet behind the ears. Many have law and business graduate degrees or years of working in other fields, and knew going in that the agency biz has a god-awful paying apprenticeship.Then again, there've been many California government crackdowns on what is tantamount to showbiz slave labor.

Once again, Camp Allen is keeping the identities of its presenters hush-hush in advance. Meanwhile, I'm told Jim Wiatt is catching a ride on a studio plane for the 27th Allen & Co investment conference in Sun Valley this week. William Morris always was invited, and Endeavor never was asked. But Jim isn't representing the new WME Entertainment, whose agents are nowhere on the list despite the presence of CAA's Bryan Lourd and Richard Lovett, UTA's Jim Berkus, and ICM's Chris Silbermann and Jeff Berg. I wonder if that has to do with WME's new boutique showbiz investment advisory biz led by Goldman Sach's Joe Ravitch & UBS Warburg' Jeff Sine who may wind up running Teddy Forstmann's annual closed-to-the-press confab in Aspen held every September that's seen as a rival to Camp Allen.