The Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike will end at 12:01 a.m. PT on Wednesday.
Bad move by the WGA boards. While I hope the TA is good and meets all demands, the workers literally haven’t seen it yet, let alone voted on it. You always want to have the strongest strike possible, and part of that is that no work gets done until a new contract is delivered, approved, and put in place. This puts the union in a weak position if the TA gets voted down.
While that may be true, they are probably also weighing that this has been a long strike. I don’t know about you, but if I had to go 100+ days without working, my finances would be a wreck. Reality is, people gotta eat
does the union keep some sort of bank to pay everyone striking or is it just “hope you have some savings”?
Not sure how the WGA operates but it’s pretty common to have reserve funds for strikes as well as doing fundraisers and whatnot
Most/all unions keep a “war chest” to pay members during strikes, but the pay rates are usually far below members’ normal earnings.
I was in a UFCW strike when I was young, and the union paid us all minimum wage. For most of us, this was less than half what we’d been earning.
I literally have no idea, but I assume that the strike cannot go on forever. Though, since I made my previous comment I’ve learned that the striking members are still able to work, so long as it isn’t WGA specific stuff (which seems fairly obvious, and I feel dumb for not realizing it). So, while it’s lesser paying stuff, those who really need it can still get work to hold them over.
As a Teamster, if I strike I get 80% of my pay (well above minimum wage) and I get their health care. Starting day one of the strike. Used to have to be on strike for two weeks, but it changed.
Not just the writers either, the entire industry is at a standstill while this plays out, and now they’ve gotta wait for the writers to actually write before productions start back up again. Lots of people will be out of work until spring probably.
Unless the board is just lying, it sounds like they got everything that they were asking for?
If that’s the case, how is it a bad move?
The WGA also released the complete 94-page contract and a summary of the new terms. The deal includes gains in compensation, a new requirement for minimum staff levels in TV writers rooms, improvement payment terms for screenwriters and protections for the use of artificial intelligence in the writing process
It sounds like everything they were asking for. I don’t think they’d move forward so aggressively if the deal was weak.
Saying that the strike failed is playing into the studio’s hands. WGA considers the strike a victory, and furthermore, the studio downplaying the strike’s agreement is a disinformation campaign they had done before.
Twitter thread by David Slack @/slack2thefuture:
"As WGA leaders meet today to finalize our deal, we begin a new era for writers — and for labor in our industry. But we also begin to face the final and most insidious form of unionbusting propaganda: a years-long effort to sell the lie that our strike was not worth it.
Over the coming days, months, and years, the studios, streamers, and their surrogates will take every opportunity to undermine what we have won together. They will seize on the inevitable consessions and compromises made by our NegCom as proof that we “failed.”
They will urge us to overlook all that we won through hard work and unwavering solidarity. They will claim it wasn’t enough, that we should have gotten X instead of Y, that we lost more by striking than we gained in this new contract. And they will be wrong.
They will tell us that the strike was unnecessary, it was a waste of our time and our savings, that our agents or managers or lawyers could have gotten us everything we won through individual negotiations without anyone having to walk a picket line. Well… then why didn’t they?
As hard as it is to believe right now, these lies can work. They’ve worked before. During our 2017 strike authorization vote, it was shocking to discover how many members believed we lost the ‘07-08 strike, in which we went on strike for the internet — and won the internet.
This didn’t happen by accident. It was the result of years of whispering by studios and anti-union allies. And they don’t just do it because they’re bitter about losing. They push the lie that we used our power and lost because they hope to stop us from using our power to win.
Our strike was necessary because, in our individual negotiations, our employers consistently refused to acknowledge our right and reasonable demands. Because the profound changes we needed could only be won through the unique and overwhelming power of collective bargaining.
Our strike was necessary because our employers made it necessary by driving our income down 23% in 10 years. Because they refused to address free work in features, streaming coverage in comedy-variety, the abuses of mini-rooms and the threat of AI until we withheld our labor
Our strike was necessary. Our strike was effective. Our strike is a victory. If anyone tries to tell you otherwise, it’s ‘cause they never want to see us stand up for ourselves again. Don’t believe it. We won this fight. We’re the WGA, and when we fight, we win. #WGAStrong"
FYI I never said that the strike had failed or anything to that effect, I just said it was a bad move by union leadership to call off the pickets before the TA had been agreed on or even been given to members (which it hadn’t at the time I posted this). It’s also fair to critique union leadership if they’re putting forward tactics that are weak. Weak tactics and bad leadership play into the boss’ hands far more than critique.
However, all of that said, now that the details of the TA are out, it does seem to be a really solid deal and WGA members should absolutely be celebrating. This was a hell of a fight and they’ve earned it.
Going from Neil Gaiman’s tumblr (easy guess which show i’m hoping will continue :D) he’s being very cautious and also advocating staying on the picket line for SAG. And he’s not updating twitter yet, hmmm.
Are there examples of this happening before?
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