Rob Long Speaks The Unspeakable
Rob Long, a television writer who moonlights as a radio commentator, recently did this controversial segment on the WGA for L.A. radio station KCRW.
In it, he describes the convulsions our union goes through during negotiations. On the one hand, he says, there are the working writers who view the hinge-points (like residuals, etc.) philosophically.
I assume by “philosophically” he means dispassionately and rationally.
On the other hand, Mr. Long says there are the non-working writers—and they’re a bit more rabid. He writes:
Non-working writers, the Unemployeds, are a different, more querulous matter. These are writers who haven’t sold a script or drawn a writer’s paycheck in years, but remain passionately involved members of the guild and its most impossible to satisfy voting bloc. For some reason, years of unemployment do not lead to difficult personal decisions (“I must stop dreaming of success and riches. I must stop talking to my friends about my next big script sale. I must realize that my job at Blockbuster is not just ‘temporary’ or a ‘great place to people-watch and get material,’ but, instead, my true livelihood, and I will begin to treat it as such by arriving on time and in uniform, and not waste a customer’s time criticizing his rental choices.”) but, rather, lead to a stubborn and highly irrelevant obsession with the writer’s potential share of hypothetical ancillary revenue generated by a script that hasn’t been written, and if written won’t be sold by a writer who is not represented by an agent who won’t sign him because, and this is crucial, his scripts do not sell. Did I mention that this is the largest segment of the voting population of the WGA?
In my experience, Rob’s allegations are actually pretty commonplace, although they’re rarely articulated so well. What I find so amazing about this is that it’s the first time I’ve heard someone publicly put their name to it. It’s been a sort of secret, eye-rolling complaint whispered between writers who feel very comfortable with each other, but never said out loud in mixed company.
I’ll admit: these thoughts have certainly crossed my mind. In many ways, I was cured of them by my service to the Guild. It turns out that in reality, some of the most ardent opponents of strikes and olde-tyme labor union rhetoric are currently unemployed. Likewise, I can think of at least three multimillionaires who would be happy to see us all on a picket line right now.
There’s a larger issue at hand here. I think Rob gets a major part of it wrong: the fracture lines are not drawn along employability. He is right, though, about the other part.
Our Guild has two factions. And just as national politics has seen polarization over the years, I can sense it in our union as well.
A long time ago, I asked some writers to come up with names for the two main groups arguing about credit policies. I guess I’ll do the same again.
Is Rob right? Are we split in two? Is it along employed and unemployed lines?
Personally, I think the two groups are defined by the central belief systems they use when approaching negotiations. For me, the two predominant belief systems are Moral and Economic. The Moralists want us to get what we deserve, and striking is still labor’s best weapon to achieve that. The Economists want us to get what we can get, and striking is just another tactic to be number-crunched on a cost-benefit basis.
Maybe this is a false dichotomy, but I would certainly find myself in Economist camp (as I’m sure Rob would).
Moralists vs. Economists? You guys are writers…maybe you can do better. :) The larger question, though, is…is this healthy? Or is this union experiencing a nasty case of, well, disunion?
Which camp is the “I’ll never vote for a strike because I want to keep working”? I think (among working writers) that’s the biggest group of all - unless the studios best and final offer is “we’re going to eat your children,” they’ll always vote to take it.
Nice go at controversy, Mazin! Does this mean I can put my ‘Dear Craig, why does the WGAe suck so bad?’ question back in the locker for now?
well, I’m unemployed (as a screenwriter, that is) and working on a spec - and I thought the deal was a good one. I think the WGA is a bit too generous in how long it permits umemployed writers like myself to retain voting rights (after getting hired once to adapt one of my own books for a studio, I then didn’t even bother to try to crack screenwriting, went on writing books, moved out of LA, got married, had kids - but remained a full voting member of WGA for years and, amazingly, still am). It’s nice for me now I’ve changed my mind and would like to sell A script, but is it fair to give me an equivalent say as a working screenwriter or teleplay writer?
Jeff:
You’d be an Extreme Economist. :) Basically, your perspective is that practically no strike makes economic sense.
Of course, you don’t really mean that, because if the AMPTP said in 2007 that they’re eliminating residuals entirely, dumping the health plan and paying us not per draft but per page…you’d go on strike.
Louise:
Well, Rob Long made it easy by be controversial for me. Save your “suck so bad” question for another day, though. :) As for the voting rights, well…that’s certainly an issue. The problem with limiting the voting rules is that a large chunk of our membership would have to vote to disenfranchise themselves.
As what you’re calling an Economist, I think I object to the designation of the other side as “Moralists,” which overcredits their arguments with a certain ethical righteousness. I’ve yet to hear a remotely compelling case, for example, that we have a greater moral right to a piece of the take on DVD sales than on initial box office… yet we never hear the Moralists, as you call them, clamoring for that in their demands.
It always comes down to what we think we can get. The Moralists, as you call them, usually make the case that we can achieve great victories by standing together. Here on the other side, I believe that without a compelling enough reason to go to battle (see your response to Jeff Lowell), we won’t stand together, and we’ll ultimately lose.
But back to your question. The problem with assigning (or claiming) political names is that they are usually shaded or engineered to engender sympathy, rather than to function as accurate descriptors (see “pro-life” and “pro-choice”). In our own case, Radical and Moderate work for me, but I could see where some others might object.
How about Hawks and Doves? Pugilists and Pacifists?
Fighters and Lovers?
Right and wrong?
that’s generally the category I put people into.
At least your Guild’s willing to strike, buddy.
On the other hand, our producers actually listen to arguments that begin, “We deserve this money because…”
Howard:
Well, since we’re on the same side, I guess I’d say that “Moralist” doesn’t necessarily mean “moral.” It means that their side makes moral arguments and uses morality as a prime motivator for action.
However, I don’t want our side to seem immoral. And I’m not a dove, inasmuch as I’ll fight like a sumbitch if I rationally believe that I’m getting screwed.
How about Idealists Vs. Pragmatists?
C.
PS: Louise, I hear ya. :)
What would it take for working writers to want to strike? What would be bad enough that they would say f—- it, let’s go?
(are you nixing profanity here, Amazin’ Mazin? We English girls never f——ing swear anyway.)
Green light for saying “fuck”.
I think the question is “What would it take today’s writers to strike?” because the economics of our industry have changed quite a bit.
I’m more than happy to answer that question, but I can’t do it here. The fact is that I’m on the Board of the WGA, I’ll probably be on the next Negotiating Committee, and I wouldn’t want the AMPTP to see my hand too clearly. I’ll email you soon…
Hell, I don’t have a portfolio, so I’ll answer:
Rollbacks of any magnitude. A threat to the established working conditions (e.g. the right to have peers determine credits). Anything which looks like a significant move backwards.
I also believe we’d strike to organize reality, cable and/or animation if that were presented to us as a realistic and legal option.
Actually, I should amend this: I can also well imagine a situation in which we’d vote to strike but not hold together long enough to win anything. The conditions would have to be right (a thriving economy, an Idealist-dominated Guild leadership). We were perilously close to that in 2001; the Idealists had the Pragmatists on the run, and we were still basking in the last of the Clinton-era boom. When the economy started to fizzle, it became clear that the will wasn’t there, and the strike was averted.
Doesn’t SAG have largely the same problem, where the majority of its membership is unemployed (or at least underemployed) at any given moment? I certainly don’t think we’ll find any answers amid the actors’ woes, but it’s worth noting that the WGA is not alone in having two very different kinds of members.
I would never argue for any two-tiered system — the last thing we need are second-class second-class citizens in the film/TV world — but I do get frustrated when non-working writers claim absolutist positions.
Still, I guess I’d disagree with Rob Long’s psych assessment of Unemployed writers. I don’t think they’re sublimating their writing into Guild activism. Talking with these writers who have had enough success to join the guild, but aren’t currently working, you often find they perceive The System as being aligned against them: the studios are the enemy.
Once you start thinking in those terms, it’s hard to accept any compromise.
In some ways, I think the most useful thing would be some membership awareness campaign of Best Practices, or at least Non-Apocalyptic Events. Give us the Written By story of a development executive who stuck up for the writer, and wasn’t an asshole. A story about non-working screenwriters whose day job is meaningful, to dispel the myth that lack of Industry success equals failure. And while we’re at it, let’s explain the studio economic model during a non-strike year so that it’s not unrealistically biased in terms of How Writers Get Screwed.
Of course, these are Utopian ideas, too.
John:
SAG has even larger problems. The vast majority of their actor members that we’d consider “working” are represented by the Hollywood chapter of SAG. However, there’s a national SAG board that routinely battles with the Hollywood chapter, and on top of that, there’s AFTRA, who also negotiates the MBA jointly with SAG.
The curious part about that is that it’s the Hollywood chapter of SAG that is the most militant. Indeed, the Hollywood chapter of SAG voted en masse against recommendation of this recent contract, but their votes were outweighed by a nearly unanimous show of support from the national SAG reps and the AFTRA reps.
What does this tell us? Well, if I were the AMPTP, I’d probably be glad that there are so many unemployed folks in these unions. Why? In short, their lack of collective bargaining clout offsets the tremendous collective bargaining clout the higher-earning members have.
Let’s go a little ad absurdum, and posit a Screenwriters Guild where only writers with a quote of $1,000,000 or more are members. I’m guessing this guild would have about I50 members or so. I suggest that this hypothetical guild would be far more dangerous to management than our current guild.
The fact that the Bass-lead contingent got the back-end deal at Sony certainly supports my position.
That’s not to suggest we ought to have a guild like that, but rather to mirror your comment: Rob’s looking for etiology in the wrong place.
If you’re interested and you have time, I’d love for you to author an article on here about how we, as writers, could have a better relationship with our employees. I’ve been banging that very gong for a long time now. Let me know, and I’ll set you up.
A better relationship with our employees, or employers? Because my assistant and I are getting along fine — unless you’ve heard something to the contrary. God, now I’m paranoid.
I was fortunate to be part of the Sony deal, which was worth more symbolically than anything. (To my knowledge, no writer really made scratch off that.) And I agree with you that the Big Earners (or whatever you want to call them) would probably have more sway than the whole guild together, at least for certain issues.
I’m not in an article-penning mood at the moment, but I certainly agree that a Pragmatist approach to dealing with the studios begins by acknowledging they’re not Evil.
Whoops. Employers. :)
I’ve been a strong voice of “Employers Aren’t Evil,” but we are few and far between, it seems. Unfortunately, the subset of members who are militant against the studios intersects strongly with the subset of members who become active in Guild service.
SAG is the same way when it comes to the voting, union involvement. Mostly it’s the background performers going to the meetings.
What would it take for working writers to want to strike?
Reading for a possible strike is sort of like a trip up Mt. Everest. You have to plan before you go. You don’t run out on a whim one day, in shorts and sandals, and say, “why, what a lovely day for a little jaunt up Everest — let’s have at it.”
Unfortunately, I think our membership often seems to be in shorts-and-sandals mode when discussing strikes.
Not only do you have to be willing to fight for something important, you have to be ready to fight. You have to be super prepared.
In 2001, arguably, we were prepared, at least to a certain degree. That’s why we scared the poop out of the studios, who then cut all sorts of deals with A-list writers before the contract expired, which then undercut the Guild’s bargaining power.
In contrast, 2004 was shorts-and-sandals time. The Guild was utterly unprepared for any kind of work stoppage. Hence, fighting for something like DVD coin — if that’s a fight the membership even wants to take on — would have been profoundly foolish last year.
Right now, I’m reading a lengthy history of the Paris Siege of 1870. With all of the Parisians lack of preparation and infighting, you’d think the whole historical event was run by a Hollywood guild. Instead of beating the Prussians, the Parisians ended up eating rats and capitulating.
David, interesting that your take on 2001 is that deals with A-list screenwriters undercut our bargaining power.
My sense at the time was that they spent like crazy during the run-up and that B- and C-listers were getting more work than they had been as the studios hurried to stockpile. And much more important, networks fattened up their reality development at the expense of scripted, to minimize the damage to the fall TV season.
Most important, the Guild’s will just wasn’t there. On the feature side, creative rights demands sounded hollow and probably unwinnable. On the TV side the top issue seemed to be foreign residuals, where we were trying to turn nickels into dimes; every working TV writer I knew was shaking his head in disbelief.
Craig, I think the only quibble I have with your thoughtful comments is that you describe Rob Long’s allegations as “they’re rarely articulated so well.”
Perhaps on the surface. But I read through his full commentary and, looking closely, I thought they were articulated…hmm, so unfortunately as to invalidate any point he was trying to make.
Let me explain. Whether the Guild is split into two factions is one issue, and a reasonable one. What I greatly disliked, however, is that while he attempts to come across as authoritative, he is repeatedly factually wrong and doesn’t substantiate opinions that he presents as fact.
Right at the start, Mr. Long describes the WGA as the “putative screenwriters’ trade union.” Given that this means, “accepted as true on inconclusive grounds,” he’s wrong, period. It is the screenwriters’ trade union. Legally. That he dismisses it as “putative” puts his perspective in deep question.
(What I mean is, it’s like a defendant shouting that “This court has no jurisdiction over me, for I am a citizen of the world!” That’s going to be a real losing argument for building a case…)
Second, talking about “Non-working” members who work at video stores, he blithely tosses out, “Did I mention that this is the largest segment of the voting population of the WGA?”
Well, his tone aside, he is once again factually wrong. After all, Writers Guild by-laws say if a member hasn’t sold material in five years they become Post-Current. And at that point — They Can’t Vote. That reality goes to he core of his overriding issue.
Finally, dragging out the old chestnut phrase, “Non-working writers,” he doesn’t give a hint of what a “non-working” writer actually is. After all, most every writer is “non-working” at times in one’s career. (Or the less pejorative “not currently employed”) The point is, if you are going to use a phrase to frame an argument, explain what it means. Otherwise, it has zero meaning and obscures the truth.
(A disclaimer: I am a Current member. That I feel I have to say this is bothersome, but I don’t want to be dismissed for being just another whining “Non-working” writer.)
There is much to criticize his positions over, but that is another debate. I merely wanted to address the points on which he is simply wrong and without any grounding. Which is why I don’t think he articulated himself well at all.
Bob:
Glad to have you on board!
I guess I should have been more clear. By “well-articulated”, what I really meant was “well-written”. I was entertained by the piece, and I thought it was well-organized.
As I made clear, I have my own differences of opinion with Rob on this matter. :)
Bob:
Isn’t it seven years from start of WGA membership, and from then on, a “rolling” four years as working, which is pushed out every time you get new work or sell another script?
I hadn’t heard about a five-year period, is why I ask.
Eric, that’s right. Initiation into the Guild gets you a seven-year guarantee of membership. Subsequent employment earns you an additional four years from the first day of the quarter in which you report that employment.
Okay, so I took the seven years and four years and just averaged them. That’s how I came up with…er. Okay, what I did was take the seven years and two subsequent periods of four-year membership, and averaged them, and came up with…wait, yes, it works out to five!
Fun with numbers. Next week, fractions.