Labor War and Labor Peace, Chapter 1

The WGA strike appears to be headed for a close, and it takes with it my number one excuse for not writing very much, here on The Pickle or elsewhere.

Over the next few days, I’ll try to outline the main disputes as well as how they’re addressed in the deal memo. Rather than going into hard numbers, though, which are uninteresting to you and unknown to me, my intention is to reflect back upon the strike in general ways that may be of interest to lefties and/or Screen Actors Guild organizers. If you are a writer, you may find it basic, and if you are a giant diversified vertically integrated multinational corporation that gets a small part of its revenue from scripted entertainment, you may find it biased.

Most everyone knows that the primary area of contention was “the internet,” but this perhaps bears a little explaining. While our demands are technically about getting paid for internet reuse of our material in the short term, what everyone really has their eyes on is the eventuality of TV becoming indistinguishable from the internet. Eventually, we will just have various sized screens and interfaces in our houses, and there’ll be one big fat cable that provides you with all your 1’s and 0’s needs, be they video, telephony or laundry detergent for your digital clothing. Those screens will have scripted entertainment programming. There may be no channels, or no schedule, but writers will still be writing things.

Of course, this is a ways off, and in the mean time, there aren’t very many people streaming TV shows. But once a rate is negotiated for the first time, it becomes an immovable object, especially if it’s costly to writers. The VHS rate negotiated in the 1980’s represented an 80% cut in the normal residual rate (because magnetic tape and plastic wheels are expensive). It has remained unchanged since then. It’s the rate we’re currently paid on DVDs. And – it’s still in the contract that I plan to vote “yes” on. Based on that experience, we knew we had to have a good foundation for an internet deal. (Incidentally, the home video rate cut has cost writers something in the neighborhood of $1.5 billion. Anger over this is probably the main factor that the leadership could call a strike. This didn’t stop the corporations from telling us we should “embrace the home video rate with open arms,” even if, to paraphrase Guild President Patric Verrone, embracing and open arms are mutually exclusive.)

There are two areas of concern here for the Writers Guild – payment, which you may have heard about, and jurisdiction, which you probably didn’t.

When the WGA has jurisdiction over a certain area, it means that when signatory companies make deals within that area, those deals must conform to standards pre-negotiated with the WGA. Sitcoms and live action movies, jurisdiction. Reality television (which is written, often meticulously) and animation, no jurisdiction. WGA jurisdiction provides a number of things. At the most basic level, it requires fair labor practices. Reality shows routinely violate these, arousing the concern of the state of California. Jurisdiction also means equitable compensation, or at least something that resembles it. To date, The Lion King – just the movie, no toys – has made $783 million worldwide. Its writers probably made about $100k. (I’m working on getting an accurate number from the Guild). And finally, jurisdiction means added leverage for the Guild. If we covered reality, then it wouldn't be cheap replacement programming during a strike, and in fact they wouldn't be able to put shows like Clash of the Choirs on at all.

This post has gotten way too long; I’ll pick up how the tentative deal addresses jurisdiction in the next one. Also, please let me know if you have questions about this or any other aspect of the strike.