Those of you who are following the WGA/AMPTP battle closely may want to take a look at this. It's a summary of the deal that David Letterman's Worldwide Pants company agreed to. Slate posted it and they called it a "waiver" but that term is at least arguable. A waiver is not a contract. It's an agreement to let work proceed without a contract. This is a contract. Now admittedly, there's a Favored Nations clause in there. It says…
If the successor to the 2004 AMPTP MBA contains different terms and conditions, those terms and conditions shall be applicable to this Agreement.
In other words, when the WGA makes a deal with the AMPTP, this document goes in the wastebasket and the final AMPTP contract is controlling. However, this is a contract and its terms are in force until the other document gets signed. That's not the same thing as a waiver.
That quibble aside, let's take a look at one key clause in it — the one about Animation…
Modify definition of "Theatrical Motion Picture" to expand coverage of the MBA to all theatrical animation except to the extent already covered under a collective bargaining agreement with another labor organization currently in effect.
When you hear that the AMPTP is demanding that the WGA drop its demands with regard to Animation, this is what they don't want to have happen. They don't want to modify that language. In their press release on the matter, the AMPTP wrote — and this is cut-'n'-pasted right from their website —
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.
As you can see, the part about writers who "traditionally fall under IATSE's jurisdiction" is kind of a Red Herring. Our demands specifically exclude work that is already covered by another union. Depending on how you interpret their statement, what the AMPTP boys might be saying is that they think the WGA has no business trying to represent any cartoon writers because that's "traditionally" the domain of IATSE. But of course, the WGA does represent cartoon writers on some TV shows and has even represented them on a movie or two…and officials of The Animation Guild have said many times that they have no problem with the WGA organizing writers who are not covered by IATSE.
So that's a bogus objection. The parts about "top-down organizing tactics" and free choice are also phony. No labor organization can claim jurisdiction over a body of workers without a free election "under the voting system administered by the National Labor Relations Board." All we're asking for is the right to go in and have those elections without the AMPTP blocking them. The WGA cannot get coverage at a studio if the writers do not choose them via a free choice.
I believe this is a totally reasonable request or demand or whatever you want to call it on our part. I'm afraid that it's going to get forgotten about in the weeks to come, especially if our bargaining has to resume with the DGA deal as the template. This matter was not discussed in the DGA talks. It's surely not mentioned in the DGA settlement. I'm certain our reps will to bring it up in the bargaining sessions but it's not an issue that seems to directly and immediately affect most WGA members, all of whom (naturally) are eager to get a deal they find acceptable. Our negotiators may not get very far with it if the message coming from the membership is "If the rest of the offer's okay, forget about Animation." Or even if we don't drum up a little noise to say it still matters to some of us.
One hopes all members will remember that this does affect them. One of the reasons that the WGA does not have jurisdiction over more "reality" shows these days is that it long neglected the area of variety shows because very few of us were writing variety shows. Back in the eighties, I was one and our needs did not get addressed as much as the needs relating to sitcoms and hour dramatic shows and screenwriting. Where there were contract abuses that needed to be handled, the Guild's sometimes-limited resources went mainly towards cleaning up matters in those areas because that was where most of our members earned their bucks.
There was a writer then who was quite angry about this…a lovely gent and a friend of mine named Gary Belkin. One of the many reasons I'm sorry Gary passed away is that he didn't get to live to say "I told you so." Gary worked a lot in variety and in the "reality" shows of the eighties, which were done under the same contract provisions as variety. He kept pointing out how studios were misinterpreting and even violating contract provisions and how not enough was being done to police this area. When we went into negotiations for new contracts, Gary would lobby for new contract provisions to strengthen contract language and reduce abuse on the kind of shows he wrote. This was never done. To the extent the Guild could make gains, it was felt it had to make them in the areas where more of our members worked. I can understand that (so could Gary) but it was short-sighted.
Mistreatment of writers in one category, even a small category, can eventually rebound against all. If Gary had gotten his way, I'm not sure we still wouldn't see "reality" shows displacing many sitcoms and hour dramatic shows, strike or no strike…but I'll bet a lot more of those "reality" shows would be employing WGA writers working under a WGA contract. Moreover, the overall definition of professional writing — its value, its dignity — gets cheapened when we let writers get trampled. I don't write soap operas and probably never will but even leaving aside principle and just operating out of sheer self-interest, I think it's wrong to not support and protect the soap writers.
Obviously, I have some self-interest in seeing the WGA expand its coverage of Animation. But I would hope that writers who never expect to write cartoons would remember that they have a stake in that game, too.