The Writers Guild has scheduled an "informational meeting" for next Monday evening at the Sheraton Universal. Since they're holding it there, they obviously expect a pretty large turnout. The rumor mill says that we will have a "final offer" from the Producers by then, one which will include slightly better numbers in the Health Plan category and pretty much nothing in the other key areas. (There may be one of those face-saving, mitigating promises to appoint a committee to study the issue or something of the sort.) If the offer is as bad as some expect, our leaders will probably announce Monday night or before that they intend to seek a strike authorization vote from the membership. Obviously, everyone is hoping it doesn't come to that.
Writers Guild strikes — I've lived through many — are unusual critters. They bring together, at least in theory, a lot of disparate folks with widely different careers. Suddenly, a guy with one or two small sales is going to war alongside screenwriters who make two million per picture and TV producers who make that much a month.
Folks in both categories think they are the ones making the supreme sacrifice in a work stoppage. The writers who aren't working much are inclined to say…
We're the ones suffering in this strike. I desperately needed that job I might have gotten next week. The rich writers aren't suffering. They have millions in the bank. They're receiving residuals. They can fly off to Europe and have a nice vacation or write a novel or a spec script, confident they'll have work the minute the strike is over. Losing a couple of assignments isn't going to cost them their homes.
At the same time, the folks who work a lot are inclined to say…
We're the ones suffering in this strike. We're the ones walking off real jobs, having real projects cancelled. We're the ones the studios are furious at for not crossing the picket lines. The guys who aren't working usually have other sources of income. They're not losing anything by being on strike for three months because they weren't likely to be working those three months, anyway.
Each of those positions is true up to the point where it denies the other. Everyone does suffer and of course, there are the ancillary pains of production assistants who are laid off, crews who don't work when shows are shut down, businesses that don't do business, etc. My gut feeling is that while no one ever really wants a strike, both sides in the current negotiation are even more horrified than usual at the prospect of one. On the other hand, the details we know of that negotiation suggest logically that we're heading in that direction. The Guild cannot allow its Health Plan to be whittled down to the point where all it gives its members is a couple of band-aids and a medium sized bottle of Bactine. My guess here is that the Producers have made their lowball offer in this area for strategic reasons. They figure that just as we're poised to strike, a slight improvement in the Health Plan offer will be so meaningful that we'll forget about the other areas.
That strategy, assuming it's the strategy, might work. Then again, the claim that they can't pay another nickel on DVD revenues is so bogus that the Guild just might walk over that one. We'll see…