Our dear friends at the AMPTP put out another of their lovely press releases yesterday. As you may recall, they walked out of negotiations with the Writers Guild on December 7 and promptly issued a list of six demands that, they said, had to be met before they'd speak with us again. There have been no talks since then, and as far as we know there have been no talks about resuming talks.
Yesterday's press release sort of reaffirms their position but it only mentions three of the six demands. It doesn't say they're withdrawing the other three. What it says is…well, here. You don't need me to summarize. Read it for yourself. Then come back and we'll discuss one paragraph in particular which I think is especially disingenuous.
Okay, here's that paragraph. It's the one about how they want us to withdraw our demand relating to the representation of those who write animation…
The WGA seeks to obtain, once again by top-down organizing tactics, jurisdiction over animation writers who traditionally fall under IATSE's jurisdiction, and to deprive those writers of their free choice to elect union coverage under the voting system administered by the National Labor Relations Board. The AMPTP has asked the WGA to withdraw this demand.
Okay, let's unpack that. I'm not entirely sure what they mean by "top-down organizating tactics" but one assumes they think we should be going via some opposite route…say, "bottom-up?" The phrase "…traditionally fall under IATSE's jurisdiction" is extremely misleading. First of all, the WGA has already organized some Animation Writers so this alleged tradition already has loopholes aplenty in it. Secondly, the immediate focus of the WGA's organizing in the area of Animation Writing is to cover studios and projects that are not covered by Local 839 of IATSE. So that's the relevant tradition here.
Then we get to the part about depriving "…those writers of their free choice to elect union coverage under the voting system administered by the National Labor Relations Board." Hey, if that's the case, we can settle this in no time. Let's have an election! Ask folks who write cartoons if they'd like the WGA to represent them. If all the AMPTP is trying to do is protect those writers' right to vote, great. Let's vote.
But of course, they won't go for that. The AMPTP is trying to prevent such votes…and by the way, to the extent the above suggests the WGA is trying to gain jurisdiction without that kind of election, that's a lie, too. The Guild couldn't win representation of these people without winning an election. What the WGA is trying to do is to get some language removed from the WGA-AMPTP contract that defines a "television motion picture" and a "theatrical motion picture," expanding it to include animation. That would give the WGA a clearer path to organize (which would mean a "bottom-up" campaign and seeking elections) at companies whose writers are not covered by IATSE.
So what the AMPTP has been doing all along is trying to block us from doing traditional labor organizing in that area and having elections…and they're saying, "We won't change the contract language in question because if you want to organize in this area, you have to do traditional labor organizing and have elections."
I know there are some people out there who are saying that the WGA should drop its demands relating to Animation and also to so-called "Reality" programming in order to get back to the bargaining table. I think that's foolish for a couple of reasons, not the least of which is that it won't get us a quarter-inch closer to a contract. The Alliance has listed six demands they say we must comply with before they'll bargain again. Now they're saying, "Drop these three" without saying the other three no longer matter. So if we do drop these three, they'll say, "Great. Now, drop the other three — especially that stuff about Distributor's Gross — and we'll schedule more talks."
And even then, there's no guarantee that those talks will move us any closer to a deal than did the earlier talks. They could just sit with us for two days, discuss the weather, make trivial and cosmetic improvements on their old deal points, and then throw us out with another list of ultimatums. That's certainly been the modus operandi so far.
There's compromise language possible in the area of Animation and also in "Reality" (which, you may notice, I always put in quotes. I've worked in "Reality" programming). In Animation, let us do the traditional kind of labor organizing, elections included, which the above statement claims they're trying to defend. In "Reality," do much the same thing. Allow the unrepresented to decide they want representation and let traditional union organizing, which the AMPTP claims to be defending, proceed.
By the way: One of the reasons that WGA representation of Animation is becoming a more and more relevant issue is that more and more movies are blurring the line between live-action and animation. Thanks to Motion Capture and other new technologies, it's getting difficult to tell on some projects where one leaves off and the other begins. I think it's safe to assume that if live-action is covered by union representation and animation isn't, the studio producing a film that's in any way arguable will be arguing the non-union side of things. Which poses a problem for the Writer because that quarrel has to take place before the movie is made, before you can look at a frame of film and even discuss whether it's live-action or animation.
It's hard enough now to determine which Polar Express was, so you can only imagine that debate when the whole endeavor was just a verbal idea. One of the reasons that Animation Writers overwhelmingly would like to be in the WGA is that they want to avoid the old bait-and-switch: They're asked to write what they're told will be an animated film and since it ain't live-action, it will have to be done without a WGA contract. But once it's done, the producers start talking about Motion Capture and inserting live actors into the proceedings…and suddenly, the Writer wakes up and he or she has written a movie that should have been done (and wasn't) under a WGA contract. It would be so much neater if they all were.
So there's yet another reason — I have more, believe me — why Animation should be covered by the WGA. If that demand and the one about "Reality" are impediments to a new contract, okay. Put them aside for now and negotiate the other main points, such as sharing revenues for Internet delivery and adjusting the compensation on DVDs. We'll have to get through those topics eventually. Why not now?