Every few years, the contract between the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers expires and a new one must be negotiated. Sometimes, the negotiations are simple and sometimes, they are not. When they are not, it is because someone at the AMPTP — or at at least one of the member companies that comprise the AMPTP — decides he or she can be a hero and advance his or her career by engineering a deal that pays the writers less or at least denies us cost o' living increases.
I joined the WGA on April Fool's Day of 1976 so I have been through many of these and sometimes been fairly close to the negotiations. It is my observation that these dust-ups are never about what's "fair," at least from the Producers' standpoint. And when they say things like, "The business is hurting…everyone needs to understand that and accept some cuts," that is always, 100% of the time, horseshit. For them, these dickerings are only about one thing: Getting as much as possible. The less we get, the more they get.
Whenever Renegotiation Time rolls around, my guild assembles something called the Pattern of Demands — a wish list of things we'd like to discuss. Many times, it is a waste of time because the studios simply refuse to address anything on our list. Their negotiators literally end the meeting if our reps bring out the list. One of the Producers' lawyers in years past liked to say things like, "We are never going to let these sessions be about what you want. They will only be about what we are willing to give you."
If anyone does look at our Pattern of Demands, they'll see items about increased compensation but they will also always see issues that are not directly about money. We want our work to be respected more. We want to be listened-to more on creative matters. We want minorities (including older writers of any color) to be given more consideration. We want our credits to be protected and so forth. Call these the non-monetary issues.
There are people in management at the studios who care about such things but we tend to not negotiate with those folks. The people we deal with only care about the money and with keeping as much of it as possible for their employers. If they address the non-monetary issues at all, it's because they think they can trade one of the unimportant non-monetary issues for an important monetary one. In the '85 negotiations for instance, the Producers demanded a change in credit procedures that would have gutted the WGA's ability to control who received screen credit. They didn't really care about that. They just wanted to be able to say, "Okay, we'll drop our demands about credits if you drop your demands about money."
Because we care (somewhat) about the non-monetary issues and they don't, sometimes that works. Indeed, in '85, they dropped those demands but in the same bargaining sessions, we accepted for other reasons a lowering of the fees we were paid when films or TV shows we wrote were put out on home video. The former cost them nothing. The latter cost us billions. From the Producers' standpoint, that was a wildly-successful negotiation. That year, I don't think they ever even listened to anything we had in our Pattern of Demands.
Even factoring in that our brief strike that year cost them some cash, the guys who engineered that deal for them were superstar heroes. It was like they'd made a dozen movies as lucrative as Star Wars or Titanic. Each time we embark on a new negotiation, there's someone there who dreams of doing that again.
It has been my observation that Writers Strikes all start the same way: Someone at the AMPTP makes an assessment of how strong and united the WGA is at the moment: How willing is the membership to go on strike? If that assessment is way too low, there will probably be a strike. The Producers will agree among themselves to offer us X as a final, non-negotiable offer. They will also agree among themselves that if/when (almost certainly when) we turn down their final, non-negotiable offer of X, they will offer us the really and truly final, non-negotiable offer of Y.
Y will be a tiny bit better than X. The theory here is that maybe, rather than reject that offer and go on strike, we will grab Y and congratulate ourselves on a huge victory, forgetting that Y is still "The Producers get more and the Writers get less."
It's kind of like if someone came to you and said, "We're going to kick you in the crotch ten times" and you said, "The hell you will, I won't stand for that" and they said, "How about if we kick you in the crotch five times?" and you yelled "Deal!" And then as they were kicking you in the crotch the five times, you were yelling between shrieks of agony, "I sure outsmarted them on that one! ARRRGHHHHH!"
When they lowball us on X and we then don't accept Y, that's when you have your long strikes…because the Producers have a great deal of trouble moving off Y. They have a rule of unanimity. The major member companies of that Alliance have to agree on all offers and sometimes, they aren't able to do that.
In '88, they agreed on X and Y — terrible, terrible offers to lower our pay and health benefits at a time when the industry was raking in record profits. But given our spectacular fold in '85, I guess they couldn't resist trying it again. The "X" offer was the equivalent of "Last time, you let us kick you in the crotch fifty times. This time, we're going for a hundred." The "Y" was only slightly less awful.
And that's a lesson we all learned back then: Once you take a bad offer, you're setting yourself up to get an even worse one next time.
But they had drastically underestimated the Guild that time. Owing to better leadership and the lesson of '85, we were much more united, much more willing to resist. We voted down X by a much wider margin than the Producers had expected and we voted down Y by almost as much.
The AMPTP couldn't agree on another offer and there was also a stubborn determination to not let one labor union "win" a strike, lest others get the idea that maybe they too could. So we had a strike that lasted 155 days. That was what it took to get to a deal that they could have given us in the first place if they hadn't figured we'd grab Y or maybe even X.
So now it's time to play this game again. Negotiations are ongoing and the Guild leadership has voted unanimously to ask for a Strike Authorization from the members. This is not a vote to strike. Understand that. It is a vote to empower the leadership to call a strike if they feel it is absolutely necessary.
I am sure they will get that authorization but the magnitude will be critical. If it's by 51% or even 70%, the Producers will figure that the Guild is weak and divided and that a lousy offer will be accepted. They'll assume that even if we do go on strike, it won't last long. If the vote is 90% or over…well, that might make them think a bad offer won't be cost-effective. (The vote will not be 100% or even a few points shy of that because some of those voting will be writer-producers or writer-directors and some of those folks vote in what they see as the best interests of their non-writer functions.)
The voting begins Wednesday and you can kinda figure out what I hope will happen. Some articles on the state of the negotiation can be found here. In the video below, you'll see members of the WGA Board and Negotiating Committee urge a "yes" vote and explain why it's important.
The Guild currently has excellent, responsible leadership and I'm optimistic that they can bring back a deal that everyone can live with without work stoppages, picketing and all the ill feelings and ancillary damage that come with a strike. But they need to have the membership behind them and a strong Strike Authorization would be the measure of that.
There seem to be some new members who, not having lived through these skirmishes before, think we should not threaten to strike so as to show we're "reasonable." That has never been what happens. If you announce you're willing to consider a dreadful offer, that's what you'll get.
Some also seem to think that voting for a Strike Authorization is the same thing as voting to strike. No. A strike results when we get a take-it-or-leave-it offer we cannot possibly accept and we have to leave-it. To give our leaders a Strike Authorization is to give them more power in the negotiation — power that will increase the likelihood that we will get an offer we can accept.
Most of you reading this aren't WGA members who'll be voting but I would hope you'd at least understand that if we strike, it will not be because we enjoy it, or because we want to kick the Producers in their crotches. We just don't want them to do that to us. Listen to some of our leaders…
