A lot of e-mails pouring in with questions about the WGA strike. Before I get to answering, let me underscore that I am not a WGA official. I am not on the Board or Negotiating Committee — boy, am I happy I am not on the Board or Negotiating Committee — though I was on a big Strike Study committee some years ago and I was heavily involved in some of our past walkouts. That said, here are some questions and my answers…
What happens to the late night shows like Jay and Dave and Conan and The Daily Show and The Colbert Report?
Probably reruns. No one expects any of those shows to remain in production without their writing staffs. The one exception, if the rumor mill is correct, may be Jimmy Kimmel. Depending on when the strike is called, this coming Saturday's Saturday Night Live may not happen. If it does, it may be the last for a while.
Will scabs write the shows?
One would certainly hope not. It's bad for my union, it's bad for the shows and it's usually even bad for the scabs. Not only are they then subject to disciplinary action or exclusion if they later try to join the Guild but the folks they aspire to work with usually don't think much of them, either as writers or human beings. (Those two categories are not mutually-exclusive.)
Why don't the directors, actors and writers all just link arms and strike at the same time for a better cut on DVDs?
Well, for one thing, because they don't all have the same interests. It's sometimes rough enough for those guilds to serve the wide disparity within their own ranks, let alone some other union's. The Producers would have little trouble formulating a proposal that would benefit one of those unions at the expense of the other two…and then what happens? You'd like to believe that would not disrupt intra-union solidarity but the truth is that it probably would.
Also, unions cannot just strike whenever they feel like it. When they do sign a deal for three or four years or whatever, there's a thing called a Contract Bar that essentially says the union will honor the pact for the entire term. If they walk off the job before the contract expires, they're legally in breach of that contract. The one exception to this is if the union has a "conscience clause" in its contract, which means that the worker may refuse to cross another labor organization's picket line and not be in breach…but very few unions have that clause. The Teamsters do, which is why it's such a big deal that they're in solid support of the WGA effort. They can, if they so elect, refuse to deliver to a struck studio or to provide other services that would involve crossing a picket line. The Casting Directors are now in the Teamsters.
I'll post more of these tomorrow.