As predicted here — and I'm not bragging 'cause this was an easy one — the Writers Guild has just overwhelmingly voted to accept the newly-proposed contract. Here are the details of the vote.
I still think this was a crummy contract but I understand why it passed. Very few members spoke up against it and those who did offered no real "Plan B." In a sense, it was like a friend of mine who thinks Bush has completely bungled the Iraq War. The friend voted for him anyway, because he was unconvinced that Kerry had a better — or, at least, markedly different — idea of what to do. I don't like this thinking, either with the presidency or the WGA, but I can certainly understand it.
The Screen Actors Guild is the next major Hollywood union that will have to negotiate a new contract and try to improve DVD revenues. They don't stand much of a chance. What keeps happening in these deals is that Union A settles for no increase but they get some sort of language that suggest that if Union B gets an increase, it will apply to Union A. Then Union A goes to its members and says, to save face and make it sound like a possible gain, "We've locked ourselves into whatever raise they get." But that's not really how it works. What actually happens in this situation is that Union A gets zero and, in the process, locks Union B into the same deal. The Directors Guild settlement undermined the Writers Guild's negotiating position and now the Writers Guild has done the same to the actors.
The good news is that we may have seen the last of the big Hollywood strikes and the bad news is that we may have seen the last of the big Hollywood strikes. I know some people think everyone in show business is overpaid but lately, the weakness of the unions has caused more and more people in the bottom-level jobs to lose ground (and, too often, health insurance) and for that money to go to the folks in the Michael Eisner jobs. At some point, this trend will have to change…but it's going to get worse before it gets better.