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Source: Deadline
There have been few disruptions of the entertainment industry that have been quite as notable as the Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike that took place between November 5th, 2007 and February 12th, 2008. During that period of time, the roughly 12,000 film and television writers that made up the WGA East and West divisions took to the streets and picketed against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), the association representing the various studios operating in Hollywood and elsewhere throughout the nation. While the strike did bring productions all across the country to a standstill and cost the industry as much as $2.1 billion dollars, it did ultimately prove to be somewhat successful for the Writers Guild, earning greater jurisdiction over newer forms of media and a larger percentage of the distributors’ grosses earned through digital services. Despite this success though, many people nowadays remember the strike mainly for the negative impact it had on several films and television series being made around that time (both in terms of finances and quality). One would think that there would be a considerable effort to prevent such an event from ever happening again, but considering the rising frequency of strikes against several different industries spread throughout the country (in fact, an IATSE striker was just barely averted less than a year ago), another writers’ strike seems all but inevitable. With the most recent contract between the WGA and AMPTP set to expire next year, one may happen sooner than most might expect.
Just recently, both the WGA East and the WGA West began to set up its negotiation committee and prepare for talks with the AMPTP, appointing a total number of 24 members. These include chief negotiator and WGA West executive director David Young, co-chairs and WGA West presidents David A. Goodman and Chris Keyser, and Patric M. Verrone, who served as president of the WGA West during the previous writers’ strike. In terms of the issues that will be brought up during these upcoming meetings, fellow committee member Angelina Burnett cited a need for better minimums and over-scale compensation as being among the many talking points that she and the rest of the committee will fight for. “There seem to be more writers than ever working at or near minimum,” Burnett wrote in a statement while campaigning for a seat at the committee. “While the majority of members continue to work above minimum (aka scale), that ‘over-scale’ ceiling has lowered for all but our most successful. This downward pressure has been evident in the data for some time, but now we’re also dealing with inflation. A dollar buys less than a year ago.” Although the WGA has been able to earn a 3% increase in minimums during past contract cycles, it has not as successfully been able to raise the limit of over-scale payment, something that the guild hopes to change with their upcoming contract negotiations. “With incentives aligned, the Guild can now make a powerful move to create the conditions for a higher ceiling. We can dramatically lift the floor and double minimums across the board,” Burnett continues. “Will it take a strike? Yes. Should we consider striking for this? Yes.”
Burnett also claimed that residuals and profit participation were additional key issues that were worth going on strike for should things take a turn for the worse, alleging that the way streaming services like Netflix and HBO Max handled data made it all but impossible to properly assess how much a writer should be paid for their work on a given film or show released via a streaming platform. “Whether in collectively negotiated residuals (which fund health and pension funds across the guilds/ crafts),” Burnett continues, “or individually negotiated back end points, every creator and unionized person employed in film and television is cheated by this secrecy.” As far as Burnett and her fellow committee members are concerned, a strike may be necessary in order for corporations to open the black box and allow unions access to this hidden data, and that such a strike should be taken in serious consideration. “I hold a smidge of hope there are nuances here that would lead them to concede with only the threat of a strike,” Burnett adds. “I wouldn’t bet on it, though. Should we consider striking for this? Yes.”
Another WGA official who earned a place at the negotiating committee was Eric Haywood, who referred to, among other issues, an overhaul of pay and residuals from streaming, an end of free work demands, and the opportunities for lower and mid-tier writers to be involving in the shooting and post-production of films and television shows that use their scripts. “We can’t afford to hope that the multi-million-dollar corporations that produce and distribute TV shows and movies will suddenly come to their senses, realize they have ‘enough’ money in their bank accounts, and share the wealth with writers out of the goodness of their hearts,” Haywood asserted in one of his campaign statements. “To the contrary, we should expect absolutely no gains for which we aren’t prepared to fight tooth and nail. Hopefully, this won’t require a strike, but if the success of the agency campaign has taught us anything, it’s that there’s nothing we can’t accomplish with a unified membership that empowers its leadership to show no fear at the negotiating table.”
Yet another recently appointed committee member, Ashley Gable, expressed similar sentiments in her own campaign statement, emphasizing the need for writers to be more justly compensated for contributing to the increasing presence of digital media (among other major changes) in the industry. “In the upcoming negotiation, we must apply our power to put more money in writers’ pockets,” Gable states. “We must negotiate responses to the effects of vertically integrated streaming, mega-mergers, the convergence of theatrical and SVOD (subscription video on demand), shorter TV seasons, the increasingly common scourge of the mini-room and subsequent assault on TV producing fees. Writers’ pay across all platforms is being driven down to scale. We need a richer streaming residuals formula. We need script parity across all platforms. We need minimums for comedy/variety content on SVOD.”
Can any of these objectives be achieved through negotiations alone, or will the WGA be forced to take part in yet another strike that would shut down productions across the nation? All the individuals previously mentioned (alongside other committee members such as Kay Cannon, Adam Conover, and Danielle Sanchez-Witzel) will certainly try their best to succeed in the former, but considering the overall circumstances, the latter should be anticipated to some degree.
