The WGA West Tradeoff: Negotiating Deals with the Writers of TV Shows and the Late-time Production of High-Redshift Production
The companies’ behavior has created a gig economy inside a union workforce and their stance during the negotiation has betrayed a commitment to further devalue the writing profession, said the WGA West on Monday. They have shut the door on their labor force and opened the door on free work for writers, because of their refusal to guarantee a level of weekly employment in the show. No such deal could ever be contemplated by this membership.”
The last WGA strike in 2007 and 2008 lasted 100 days and was credited with tipping California into a recession, causing a loss of around $2.1 billion to the state’s economy.
The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon is the first show to be affected and is expected to stop production immediately. Soap operas and scripted dramas are expected to be impacted by either shortening production or stopping production entirely. If the strikes go on for a long time, studios, networks and producers are increasing productions in preparation for this outcome.
A report published by the union on March 14th found that half of TV series writers are currently being paid the basic minimum rate, up from 33 percent between 2013-2014. The companies have used the transition to streaming to cut writer pay and separate writing from production, worsening working conditions for series writers at all levels, according to the WGA.
The union’s demands include increasing minimum wage rates and residuals payments, addressing the “abuses of mini-rooms,” and increased contributions to the union’s health and pension plan. The WGA also wants safeguards to regulate the use of artificial intelligence in scriptwriting, preventing it from being used to generate content or rewrite work already contracted by human writers.
The AMPTP said in a statement it had offered a number of significant increases in compensation that included an improvement in streaming residuals. It was unwilling to compromise on the union’s demands for “mandatory staffing” and “duration of employment” however, saying these “primary sticking points” would require companies to staff shows with writers even if they’re not needed.
For the past few years, tensions have been rising between the two groups. The last contract negotiations were done minutes after the contract expired. The covid pandemic then made it difficult for both sides to negotiate terms for the following three-year contract agreement in 2020.
The 2020 contract bargaining season was a failure after the Pandemic, so the TV industry is in need of a wake-up call. That prevented writers and their employers, represented by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, from reaching new agreements on emerging technology and business practices.
Nobody cared if you went on strike in 2020. It just didn’t matter, because nobody was working anyway,” Kate Fortmueller, an assistant professor of entertainment and media studies at the University of Georgia, told NPR.
Tech-New-Physics Insights: Why Is Television Needs a Mini-Room for Writers?
“We haven’t seen them in these negotiations in the past,” she said. “So I think that’s not necessarily a wild card, but it does change some of the stakes.”
She noted that the tech industry’s labor conditions and standards differ from those in Hollywood.
The growth of streaming shows is linked to a controversial topic: the shrinking of writers’ rooms, into “mini rooms,” where there are fewer writers than a traditional room would employ. Where some rooms traditionally employed around seven writers (or more than twice that, for some series), mini rooms get by with a handful of them, on a short-term basis.
Production companies say the model helps them vet a show more fully before committing to a full series. Writers say that the practice reduces their pay and reduces their contributions.
A writer recently said that he was getting paid less than he would if he did the work in a full writers room.
ethical questions were raised by the strike and its disputes. On one hand, she says, there are so many shows to watch, and only so much time. She would like to support the writers behind full-length shows.
“It’s probably better for me to invest my time in shows that have better working conditions, that are helping keep people employed,” she said. She added that when people reach decision fatigue, “the lure of the minimal commitment is pretty strong.”
Those who watched TV found many more opportunities for reality TV shows, such as Project Runway and The Biggest Loser. People again flocked to “reality” in 2020, when viewers mentally escaped the pandemic shutdown by watching Tiger King.
The impact on the audience’s perspective is not likely to be as strong, Fortmueller said. She noted that the spring and summer season is not the best for television, but there are streaming platforms that have content from international markets.
The long term, they can’t rely on that, because they don’t want to lose new subscribers to new shows. It can only last so long before it hurts them.
Similar scenes of solidarity unfolded across the entertainment capital. At Paramount Pictures, more than 400 writers — and a few supportive actors, including Rob Lowe — assembled to wave pickets with slogans like “Despicable You” and “Honk if you like words.” The writers who wrote the novels “Watchmen” and “Lost” are Damon Lindelof and Jenny Lumet. Strange New Worlds”) marched outside Amazon Studios. Acrimony hung in the air outside Walt Disney Studios, where one writer played drums on empty buckets next to a sign that read, “What we are asking for is a drop in the bucket.”
“If you only get a 10-week job, which a lot of people now do, you really have to start looking for a new job on day one” said Alex Levy, who has written for Netflix shows like “Grace and Frankie.” “In my case, I haven’t been able to get a writing job for months. I had to borrow money from my family to pay my rent.