Brian Dreger, who sends me a lot of good questions, sent this one…
I've always wondered: what would happen if some producer or someone not in the Writers Guild wrote a script during a strike, and it was produced (never mind about the quality being crappy, etc.). It seems obvious someone will find out and report it…but what are the real penalties involved? I don't mean what would happen down the road after the strike, when no writers would ever work for those people again. Is there some sort of standing, official penalty to prevent this sort of thing? If scabs break a union line in other types of strikes, there is often violence and name-calling, etc., but I'm not aware of any penalties that ever happen.
People who are members have been brought up on charges of scabbing and people who were not members have been banned from ever joining the Guild, at least for a while. The Guild is not the police. It can't throw people in prison but it has enforced the penalties it could enforce. In the past, there was some anger over incidents where someone was or was not "prosecuted" (that's not precisely the right word) because they were so famous but I don't know enough about those to be more specific. Yes, people have been penalized.
It isn't that no writers would ever work for the employer again. It's more often that no writers would ever work again with people they thought were scabs. I do not know of any violence that has ever resulted but there maybe has been a bit of name-calling.
Generally speaking, scabbing usually turns out to be a bad career move. During the '88 strike, a gent I later knew as a researcher did some writing on one of the daytime dramas. He went back to being a researcher after the strike was over because the show for which he wrote didn't want him around after the strike ended and the "real writers" (that's what he called them) came back.
Daniel Klos writes…
In most industries, when union employees go on strike, they strike against their specific employer. My understanding is that most (all?) screenwriters are not employees in the traditional sense but rather independent contractors, and the strike is not against a specific employer. So who exactly is the WGA striking against? The studios? The networks? Producers? If it's against producers, does that put certain people who are both producers and writers in a conflict of interest situation (where they are both labor and management)? And if it's a strike against the studios and/or networks, is it against each entity individually? Or is it a strike against a collective organization that they all belong to? And if it's the latter, does that mean that no studio or network is allowed to craft their own independent agreement with the WGA?
A labor organization like the Writers Guild (or the Directors Guild or SAG-AFTRA or others) makes a contract with this group called the AMPTP. That contract is called the Minimum Basic Agreement (the MBA) and it specifies, for example, the minimum amount each member studio will pay a writer for a certain kind of script. It sets down all sorts of terms and working conditions and promises that we won't do these things to them and they won't do these other things to us. My agent or lawyer or I can negotiate for better terms on a given job but not for less favorable terms.
The AMPTP is made up of the major employers. Employers who are not voting members of the AMPTP can employ WGA writers on the same terms by signing onto what are sometimes called "Me Too" contracts. That term has nothing to do with the current "Me Too" movement and if I had more time, I could probably come up with some ironic remark about producers like Harvey Weinstein who signed onto one and was brought to justice by the other.
A strike of both major and minor employers results when the old MBA expires and no new one has been agreed-upon to take its place. So we are striking against a collective organization but also the other employers who piggyback on whatever contract the AMPTP and the WGA agree upon.
Yes, there are people who are both writers and producers and they are often caught in a conflict of interest situation. Some studios are now demanding that writer-producers cross WGA picket lines to produce. The fact though that the membership of the WGA authorized the strike action by almost 98% should suggest that very few of those folks have trouble deciding that the writing part of their two job descriptions is of great importance to them. And a lot of the remaining 2% are probably not writer-producers but actor-producers or maybe something else along with being a producer.
During a strike, the Guild may (note the italics for emphasis) decide whether to offer interim contracts. An interim contract specifies the new terms but it can be replaced by the new MBA once there is one. If such contracts are offered, a given company may (emphasis again) elect to sign one, in which case writers can work for that company while the strike continues elsewhere.
For instance: During the last strike, David Letterman's show went back to work while the competing Tonight Show with Jay Leno remained shut down. Letterman's company, Worldwide Pants, owned his show and when the WGA offered interim contracts, it signed on. Leno's show though was owned by NBC and NBC was not about to sign any interim agreement.
There are pro and con arguments within the Guild about whether it's good strategy to offer interim deals just as there are pro and con arguments within the studios as to whether signing them is a wise strategy for them. If this strike lasts a while, both parties will be having internal debates about all this but so far, the subject probably hasn't come up.
And I think I covered everything. Thank you, Brian and Daniel.
