Strike!
March 26th, 2008By Stu Cone
If you’ve been paying attention to television, you may have noticed that many of your favorite shows didn’t last very long after Christmas. The reason is because they had no writers. No writers, means no scripts. And no scripts means there aren’t any productions. No shows. Hollywood more or less shuts down, save for a few films that made it into production in time. But even those films suffer, as they could not have their scripts changed or amended in any way because… that would be writing!
So, what’s the deal? I’m not here to convince you of anything regarding the strike. I am pro-strike. This article is more about making the bullet points of why the strike happened. Why me? I suppose because I’m a writer, because I have access to and interact with WGA member writers, and because I’ve been following the strike pretty closely since before it began because I have a future stake in it. The deal reached in the last few days will possibly be the deal that I inherit as a writer when I become a member of the Guild. So… what’s the deal?
The Writer’s Guild of America is for all intents and purposes a union. Some of you may be familiar with unions, but for those who aren’t, here’s the basic idea: A union is, in a nutshell, an organization that represents workers in a particular field to ensure that they are treated fairly and compensated appropriately. When a union’s members come to a situation in which they believe that they are not being treated fairly, they can legally halt their work and protest, going on strike.
Unions have been around for quite a while in America, and founding them was a hard process for the nation. People died to create a work environment that was beneficial for more than just the bosses.
But, aren’t writers making millions of dollars in Hollywood, Stu?
Some do. A handful.
Worldwide.
Some are in a more moderate bracket, and some are living on residuals.
Residuals are basically royalties. When a writer sells a script, they are selling the rights to use their work for production. Anytime money is made off of the product, they are entitled to a percentage of the profits. That sounds amazing, and it would be if that percentage were in the 25% range.
The agreement leading into the strike was in the 2% range for DVD sales.
For the writers who aren’t in that 10 or so who are inking million dollar deals, striking was more about putting food on the table between scripts. If one sells a script for a movie that costs more than $5 million, the minimum scale pay is $77,000.
Zowie, that’s amazing!
And if you don’t sell another script for 5 years? And you live in Hollywood’s cost-of-living situation?
Ah. It’d be nice to have residuals coming in off of that sale to keep things going until the next sale. And maybe something more than 2.5% of $14.99/DVD.
Now that we understand residuals (and why they are necessary for some) a little better, let’s get to the heart of this particular strike.
New Media
New Media is the term being used to describe streaming content over the internet, more or less. Under the pre-strike union deal with the studios, there was no residuals provision for writers in regards to streaming content over the internet.
That means that if you’ve ever watched LOST through ABC.com, the studio made money from selling ads that streamed with it, but the writers who worked on the episode received nothing.
And the studios wanted to keep it that way, or offer a deal comparable to the current DVD deal.
Imagine writing a fantastic paper for one of your classes. And the Prof went on to showcase that paper in every class he taught as a great example of how to write a paper.
Now imagine he gave you no credit for it, resulting in an F.
It’s sort of like that.
Or, more accurately, imagine that you got an awesome job, worked hard, and then your boss refused to pay you for every other day of work. Ouch.
These analogies aren’t perfect, but I hope you get the point.
Not every writer is rich. Many are not. Employers were doing shady business. That is why any union strikes, and that’s why the WGA went on strike. For more information, I’m including some resources below.