After every Writers Guild strike, there's the unfortunate business of investigating claims of scabbing and charges that members (and non-members) crossed picket lines to perform writing services. As I wrote in this article for New Republic during the last strike, there is surprisingly little scab work done during one of our strikes. There are often a lot of accusations but then they rarely prove to be valid. When the WGA takes a hike, very little writing gets done.
The Guild has just closed the books on that strike with only minor disciplinary actions. One member was fined for writing a pilot script during the strike. Another is being disciplined in unspecified ways.
One non-member has been permanently barred from membership…and that's about it. Especially notable is that Jay Leno, who was accused of violating Guild rules when he went back to work during the strike and generated his own monologues, appears to be unmentioned in the final report. What I am hearing is that the Guild concluded that what Leno did fell into a "gray area" and that given Jay's otherwise strong support for the strike, and the fact that he did confer with the Guild before making his decision and there was some ambiguity in those discussions, they've elected to not make an issue of it. There are, I know, folks in the Guild who'd love to "string up" someone famous for violating strike rules but even most of them didn't think Jay's case was clear-cut enough for that.
I suspect we'll see some of the language in those rules revised and made clearer before the next Writers Guild strike. And don't think there won't be one in the next decade or so.