Unlike in most industries, where union members make up a minority of the workers, in screenwriting, the work force is the union. (I am a WGA member, but we journalists are not technically on strike.) If studios want people to write their movies and shows, those people will be members of the union. With few exceptions, if you are a working screenwriter, you are in the Writers Guild. What makes this strike notable is that the WGA is one of a relatively small number of unions in America that actually has power at an industrial scale. How far apart are they? The WGA’s total asks would come to $429m a year the studios’ current offer stands at $86m a year.Lol. After weeks of intense negotiation, the two sides aren’t close. Not until a fair contract with the AMPTP, a coalition of major studios, is reached. So the new TV shows and movies ain’t gonna get made. The people who write all the TV shows and movies ain’t writing. That’s because, on Tuesday, the Writers Guild of America (WGA) went on strike. You may have noticed, if you turned on your TV last night, that the late night shows have suddenly stopped. Welcome to the Great Writers Strike of 2023. The plain old workers standing up against enormous companies to stop the process that is turning their careers into execrable “gigs”. That would be something for everyone to cheer for. What would be remarkable is if – when you realized that your once-good job was being made worse in order to satisfy the profit hunger of some faraway investment banker – you were able to actually do something about it.
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