The Average Writer's Non-Biased Guide To The Upcoming WGA Negotiations
A few weeks ago, I received an email from a fellow WGAw member who wrote:
I joined the WGA last year. Joined WA a few weeks after. All this talk of strikes and what-not….man, it’s a mess. I’ve talked with fellow ‘newbie’ wga writers and the fact is: no one understands what the hell is going on.
…So, a primer or a “The WGA for Dummies” type of thing…y’know, like ‘Our Story So Far….” sort of article. It’s a big undertaking but if you’re ever looking for a topic for your site, maybe this is one that should at least start getting addressed.
At first, I groaned, because I thought that a) he was right, I did need to write this, and b) it was going to be a big undertaking.
But you know, in the end, it’s not really all that complicated.
And so, I present to you the primer. I will do my best to be as unbiased as possible.
What Are These Negotiations Anyway?
Every three years, the WGA, west and the WGA East work together to negotiate the Minimum Basic Agreement (or MBA) with the companies we all work for. The MBA sets the terms for things like “What is scale?” and “How much residuals do I get?” and “How much will the company contribute to my pension and health insurance?”
The companies are represented by a trade organization called the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, or AMPTP. The AMPTP is largely controlled by the big studios (Paramount, Disney, Columbia, Universal, Fox, Warner Brothers) and the big networks (CBS, ABC, NBC, Fox and The CW). Their chief negotiator is a man named Nick Counter.
How Do The Negotiations Work?
The WGAw and WGAE create a joint committee called the Negotiating Committee, or NegCom for short. The NegCom consists of 17 members, and the division between East and West is determined roughly by the proportion of the two memberships. The officers of the WGAw also sit on the committee in an ex officio status.
First, the NegCom drafts a laundry list of “stuff we want out of this negotiation,” and they send it to the members of the WGAw and WGAE. The members try and rank the laundry list in the order of importance to them, and the NegCom then uses this list as its “set of demands.”
In reality, the “set of demands” is pro forma, as the demands tend to be the same year after year, and the NegCom isn’t bound by them in any case.
The NegCom then proceeds to negotiate with the AMPTP. Our chief negotiator is our Executive Director (currently, that’s David Young).
The negotiations occur over weeks and sometimes months. They consist of two basic types of interaction.
The formal negotiations occur between the committees in large conference rooms. They have often been compared to kabuki, as they’re ceremonial, extremely structured and very carefully orchestrated so as to avoid making any mistake, setting any dangerous bargaining precedent or carelessly ceding leverage.
The true negotiations largely occur in sidebars. The two sides caucus separately, then send their three heavy hitters into sidebars with three guys from the other side, and wheeling and dealing ensues.
Once a deal is determined, the NegCom votes on whether or not to recommend it to the Board of Directors of the WGAw and Council of the WGAE. Following that recommendation, if the Board and Council vote to recommend the deal to the membership, then we all vote on the deal. Majority rules.
How Does A Strike Or Lockout Work?
The first thing to know is that while we’re covered by the deal we approved in 2004, we can’t strike, and the other side can’t lock us out.
Once the deal expires (October 31st, 2007), all bets are off.
If the NegCom fails to recommend a deal to the Board, or if the Board fails to recommend a deal to the membership, or if the membership fails to ratify a deal, then a strike is possible. It’s the same mechanism. The NegCom recommends a strike to the Board, the Board recommends a “strike authorization vote” to the membership, and the membership votes.
If the membership votes to authorize a strike, the Board is then free to declare a strike if they feel the need. The Board can also ask the membership to vote to declare a strike.
In no case can a strike happen without a majority of the members voting for it.
A lockout is pretty much just like a strike, except instead of writers refusing to work, the companies decide to no longer hire any of us until a deal is struck.
Again, a lockout can only occur after the current deal expires.
The WGA has struck a number of times since its inception, with the longest and most recent strike occurring in 1988.
The AMPTP has never locked out the WGA.
So What Are We Arguing About This Year?
Every three years, we ask for increases in minimums, increases in pension and health, more creative rights, and a long list of other things.
The big argument for the last 20 years, however, has been over residuals.
Most of our residuals formulas stipulate that we are to collect 1.2% of what the companies make off of so-called “secondary markets.” Those markets include broadcasting movies on television, pay-per-view, and home video.
It’s the home video that’s been giving us fits.
In 1985, the companies decided that they didn’t want to pay 1.2% of what they were making on VHS tapes. Instead, they wanted to apply the 1.2% to 20% of what they were making. After a failed strike in 1985 and another failed strike in 1988, we ended up with the much-hated home video formula of 1.5-1.8% of 20% of what they make on VHS…and DVD.
Arguing and posturing aside, there haven’t been any strikes since 1988, because once the home video battle was lost, no strike-worthy battle has arisen.
That’s changed.
Everyone is freaked out over “new media,” or “internet video on demand.”
In short, the football this year is how we’re going to be paid residuals when people pay to download our television shows and movies through the net, be it on to their iPod or their computer or their Apple TV or their DVR or some soon-to-be-purchasable tv-computer-internet thingy.
The two unions with the biggest stake in this are the WGAw/E and SAG. The DGA has a lesser stake, because many of their members are below-the-line employees (1st AD’s, UPM’s) who earn a relatively small fraction of money from residuals. Regardless, it’s a huge issue for all three unions.
It’s also a huge issue for the AMPTP. When they deal with one union on this issue, they know they are dealing with all three, because of “pattern bargaining.”
Pattern bargaining dictates that if one of the three creative unions gets a residual improvement, then the other two must get it as well.
Residuals are generally paid like this: the writers get X, the director, 1st AD and UPM get X, and the cast gets 3X (because there are many more actors to divvy the residuals for than there are writers or DGA employees).
So, whatever we’re asking for, the AMPTP knows it’s going to have to ultimately pay out five times that amount.
Is It Just Me, Or Does Everything Seem More Militant This Time Around?
It’s not just you.
In 2005, the WGAw elected a slate of candidates who expressed a desire to be tougher with the studios.
The basic plan of this slate, led by current WGAw President Patric Verrone, was to organize reality television writers, bring them into our union, and thus be able to create a very strong strike threat against the AMPTP (right now, the producers believe, rightly, that reality television is a huge wedge against the efficacy of any WGA strike, because it keeps new programming on the air during a walkout).
The slate believed that with this enhanced strike threat, we’d be able to improve on the 1.5-1.8% of 20% formula when it came to residuals for internet downloads.
Unfortunately, no reality writers have been organized into the WGA. It is highly probable that we will go into the 2007 negotiations without any enhanced strike threat.
Still, the last year has definitely been marked by heightened rhetoric from both sides. The WGA engaged in a number of controversial “corporate campaigns” designed to shame or pressure the companies into letting us organize reality writers, and the AMPTP took out a full-page ad in the Variety excoriating the current WGA leadership.
So Are We Going To Strike Or What?
Hard to say. Always cloudy is the future…
I think there’s certainly a better chance of a strike this time around than there was last time around, but my personal opinion is that there won’t be a strike.
It is possible that we might work past our contract, as we did in 2004.
Okay, What Happens If We Work Past Our Contract?
Not much. We lose our protection against a lockout, and certain grievance provisions go away, but other than that, our 2004 contract remains in effect. The idea of working past the deadline is simple: we try and get closer to the expiration of the SAG contract (June 2008), and then we use their strike threat as leverage to get us both a good deal on internet downloads.
The danger of waiting?
The DGA could always leapfrog the WGA and SAG and make an early deal (which they did in 2004). If they do, it’s pretty much game over. The WGA and SAG will almost certainly get stuck with the deal the DGA makes. If it’s a good deal, that’s no problem.
If it’s not, that is a problem.
Will We Win?
Possibly. A better question is…will the fight even happen? It’s possible that the entire issue of internet residuals will get punted down the line three years, because no one really knows how the economics of downloading movies and television will work.
I hope this primer was of use and answered everyone’s basic questions. I tried my best to stay away from political opinions. If you have any other questions about this rather nutty negotiation year, please go ahead and ask them in the comments section.
This is the clearest explanation I’ve read thus far. Thanks, Craig.
Here in the UK, our admittedly much smaller Guild is going through identical negotiations, with a whole new approach required regarding payment for downloads etc. Our system is less formalised than yours, we have to have three separate agreements - one for the BBC, one for the other main TV channel ITV, and one for all the independent producers - and by coincidence, they’re all happening at once. Do you get together with SAG beforehand, or are the requirements of writers too different to those of actors for it to be worth coming up with a list of general needs?
Great breakdown.
My question, why does there have to be a WGA west and WGA east?
Why can’t there be a WGA, one that covers both coasts? SAG doesn’t have an east and west division.
Thanks for this Mr. Mazin…very helpful.
Awesomeness. Thanks for that explanation, Craig.
BTW, can you possibly have a more appropriate name than chief negotiator Nick Counter? Not without stretching credibility, I think.
One questions: does home video include DVD sales?
I’ve often found myself wondering how much of a financial shot in the arm studios got from DVD sales since their inception. I constantly hear about how bad things are for the studios, about staff cutbacks, etc. but I would think DVD sales must have added 20-50% to their profits.
A semi-pro (optioned) screenwriting friend of mine who’s pretty fanatical about keeping up with Industry news claims the studios haven’t paid out residuals on DVD sales. Is that true?
Since you didn’t address it here, it makes me think it isn’t.
Thanks for the news.
Travis, as I said above…
Your friend is wrong.
Vlad:
Yeah, funny, huh?
Joshua:
Too complicated an answer for this go-round, but I’ll talk about the stupidity of the WGAw/E division another time.
Dave:
The creative unions often attempt to work together, but they really never have in any effective way. There’s a ton of mistrust between the unions, and the AMPTP is excellent at playing divide-and-conquer.
Thanks for that.
Is there ever any provision for outside mediation in the negotiations? or is it always just NegCom and AMPTP?
PS: small typo “approve on” should be “improve on.”
Ugo:
Thanks. That’s a “thinko”.
Craig,
How closely are WGA/SAG watching the current ACTRA “strike” in Canada? They are asking for %50 residuals on new media (which seems very high, even for a starting point). Rumours are some Hollywood Execs are watching over the shoulders of the Producers Union. Do unions in other countries ever influence those in the US?
Nick
Joshua:
True but they might as well.
Not only does SAG work a little bit differently from Los Angeles to New York but I recently just learned the hard way that’s even more screwy in Florida.
I feel a bit gunshy. I recall the simple threat of a strike leading to the explosion of Reality TV. Perhaps that’s oversimplifying. But it certainly felt that way at the time.
And although “to strike or not to strike” is a long way down the road, I wonder if a strike has ever gone to vote and then been voted down by the membership. Because I can’t help but think, if it goes to a vote it will happen, regardless of the issues. And that bugs me. Working writers make up a small percentage of the guild membership. And there is a perception that those members who currently make their money outside the Hollywood system have nothing to lose by voting for a strike.
Thanks for breaking it down Craig. My feeling has been that there’s going to be a punt, since nobody knows what the economic model for downloads will be. Ultimately, I see some subscriber based system, like cable TV, coming available, where you pay X dollars per month for unlimited access to content provided by a company. The way it’s set up now reminds me of how companies first tried to charge for internet access by the hour, before realizing a flat fee was the way to go. We ultimate won’t pay per download, but for access to a provider’s library or catalog. But until we see the numbers, who knows what to ask for?
I’m seriously in awe of the WGA logo. The eagle is holding a scroll of some sort in its right claw but what’s this thing it’s holding in its left claw?
So is there any chance the WGA and/or SAG will (I hate using this term) “reach out” to the DGA to form an alliance with them? If they’re in a position to undermine efforts of the other two guilds, does it make sense to try to get them not to do that?
Susan
NetFlix just started a new service where you get X hours per month of online movie-watching in addition to DVDs, based on your level of service (i.e., the 1-disc-at-a-time service gives you 6 hours per month, the 3-disc service gives you something like 20 hours, etc.).
You could watch a movie for 30 minutes, decide it sucks, switch to a different one, and watch that for 90 minutes. You’ve used up 2 hours of your allotment for the month.
I have no idea how that model affects residuals. But there must be some sort of agreement, because it’s in place already (although it hasn’t been rolled out to all NetFlix subscribers yet).
Thank you so much for this information, Craig. From someone way out on the parameter, it’s nice to know how the world that I aspire to belong to is presently being shaped.
I know you strove to keep political opinions out of your recap, but what would you say is the crux of the breakdown each negotiation period? Greed? Power? Fear of change?
I was wondering how does this affect writing for the web at the moment before October 31st?
I know there were arguments over the web content of Jericho and Battlestar Galactica? There’s probably other shows as well right..?
I’m trying to figure out why the movie studios etc haven’t gotten on the web and made their versions of Lonelygirl15? Is it to do with paying writers and these WGA negotiations??
I’m trying to figure everything out because I’m writing a series of posts about web series at my own screenwriting blog :)
Just another silly question. Under U.S. labor law, does the WGA have to go out on an open-ended strike? Here in the UK, unions have had success going with series of one and two day strikes (like with the recent threatened British Airways cabin crew strike).
Obviously, a day won’t make any difference but a week during the fall TV production season would hurt a lot.
Kevin:
Not at all a silly question. The WGA can call a strike and enforce a strike for as long as it wishes. Even for a day.
The companies can’t be counted on to not subsequently lock the union out, but there’s nothing that says you have to strike until a deal is hammered out.
Ah. Thanks. I work part time for the post office over here and we’ve gone out a handful of times since I started (including two fairly lengthy wildcat strikes). I realize our situations are completely different but best of luck with negotiations. Going out is always a tense, tense time (though almost always for the best.)
Surely, the future of home distribution will be a service paid for by a fixed monthly fee.
LOVEFiLM already do this with DVDs. They’re flourishing.
As the download market matures, high-volume consumers will get too bored (and poor) to download films the way they download music from iTunes.
So the providers will offer an incentive: for a fixed monthly fee equal to the cost of, say 20 titles, you can download 50! Parrrty!
But no help to WGA members if no-one’s counting “views” of their material.
Should the WGA be turning to the collectors of music royalties (like PRS in the UK) for more practical ways to measure film “views”?
And therefore have a plan that helps the AMPTP producers (with driving a deal with these online distributors) as well as the WGA (in getting members their fair slice of the pie).
Possible?
Dear Craig,
What an excellent primer. I have only one difficulty with it. You write…
“The [Verrone] slate believed that with this enhanced strike threat, we�d be able to improve on the 1.5-1.8% of 20% formula when it came to residuals for internet downloads.”
This sentence seems to suggest there is a current status quo on internet downloads (the godawful DVD formula), and the Guilds would like to buck that status quo— would like to “improve” that formula. But that’s management’s argument. As you know, there is no formula in Internet Download sales, and, in fact, the only residual formula that currently exists is on Internet Download rentals and that formula is favorable to us: 1.2% of 100% (the TV residuals formula). We won this in the 2001 negotiation.
If I could made one more point: the TV residuals formula (1.2% of 100%) applied to Internet Downloads might seem like “an improvement” to feature writers, but to TV writers it’ll just be an avoidance of a rollback.
—Robert King
Robert:
I presume that both sides are aware that the AMPTP prefers to apply the DVD formula to internet sales, mostly because that’s the exact formula Disney/ABC attempted to impose on the WGA in 2006.
As someone who was around during the 1988 strike as a “union militant”, that was the event that turned the lives of screenwriters in Hollywood upside down as a result of its outcome and the “punishment” that was meted out afterwards (guess what? before that strike, writers actually got paid for being writers on everything they did, there weren’t free options, you didn’t have to fight a demand for free rewrites because nobody made those demands, there weren’t these script auctions that you have a greater likelihood of being struck by lightning than participating in, and people who didn’t have family trust funds to live on could actually break into the business and get paid for their work while so doing - there were no @#$%$#@!! “interns” and the Ivy League hadn’t found out we were the last respectable outlaw profession for upper class white boys as my old friend David Freeman once described it. A good “for example” is that, before the strike, 80% of the membership qualified for health insurance at any given time. I remember reading a few years ago that those percentages are now reversed) I sincerely hope there is not a strike.
In 1987/88,I was one of those who scorned mu fellow members (all of whom were older than I)who told us we had a “good enough” deal and we shouldn’t go killing the goose that laid the golden eggs. Unfortunately, those people were right. Katzenberg and the other pissants on the other side of the desk went out of their way to talk about “breaking” the union, which put people’s backs up, and the result was so much stupidity on both sides that what should have been a six-day strike turned into a six-month strike, and today every writer in the business - whether they know it or not - is still living with the consequences of that event.
So here I am, 20 years later, one of the few writers I know of my age who didn’t make them a bazillion dollars before age 40 still working (not much and not for much, but you try filling out a fake resume with 25 years of jobs at companies that no longer exist,working for people who all died, and see if you can get anyone out in NormalWorld to believe you and hire you), and I am going to say anyone who votes for a strike might as well just go cut their own throat for all the good that vote will ultimately accomplish.
Yes, writers don’t get paid enough. All the pay that writers used to get before 1988 when they could work for years “in development” now goes to ffinance the 6-figure starting salaries of 25 year old scumbags who want to be “professional studio executives.” I would personally KILL for the chance to be living back in that world of “good enough” because nothing that gets gained from any strike now is ever going to make up to that.
My advice: take what you get and be thankful you aren’t commuting every day on the LA freeways to a job you would really hate.
As someone now working on those little shows that are going to be downloaded in 90-second chunks to people’s cell phones, I can tell you that it is an even bigger Wild-Ass Guess than anything you can imagine, as to what the economic model of this is going to be, assuming it works and achieves “orbital velocity”. The best thing that can be done right now is to kick the can three years down the road and hope by then someone has an idea what is what.
20 years ago, my late writing mentor (a guy whose name you could look up in the IMDb and be impressed by his credits if I was to “name drop”) could plan on an entire life as a writer, and he actually finished his last screenplay six weeks before dying at age 78. Like I said above, I know very few people my age still working in this business, and you younger folks need to be planning what else you are going to do with your lives, starting on your 45th birthday, because it’s very likely you won’t be screenwriters any more. I hate teling you this, but it’s the truth. 20 years ago, we were striking against the studios. They were still (mostly) stand-alone operations, and were run by people who (mostly) actually liked movies. Today they are minor arms of multinationals who see them as producers of “product” (and that’s what they’re putting out, which is why nowadays I maybe go to five movies a year, rather than one every Friday, like I did up to 10 years ago). They could decide to break the union, and they could do it, brothers and sisters. You think there aren’t 100 people for each of us who would think twice about walking on your face to step into that job you just struck? And we live in a world even more anti-union than 20 years ago.
So this former “union militant” gives you the following advice, from Mao Tse-tung’s “little red book”: Guerillas (us) should never pick fights that we can’t win, and this is one of those.
I truly wish my advice was 180 degrees different, but I might as well give you a loaded gun as to do that. The union that gave up the possessory credit in 1962 for first class air travel to the movie location (when was the last time a writer used that one?) is not the organization to make this kind of fight and make it stick. Sorry.
Powerful stuff, TCinLA.
I hope those in the leadership read this and heed it. Perhaps we’re doomed to repeat history, but I urge you to send your comments above to the Board of Directors. The letter will be included in the packet that they read each month, and yours is a voice that deserves to be heard.
I was just thinking about that. It’s not just in the arts — interships are rampant in pretty much all interesting professions these days. “Let’s get someone to work for free, because we can!” (So much for minimum wage.) I’m not what you would call a class-struggle guy, but there are few better ways to give yet another extra leg up to kids with trust funds.
If I were crazy enough to make a prediction (and I’m not — yet), I would tell you the way the ‘07 negotiation will play out is:
The WGAw-AMPTP negotiate to non-conclusion; the DGA negotiates early to conclusion; acrimony is flung this way and that; there is a mild de facto strike.
And several cans will be kicked down the road (which probably means they’ll continue to be kicked.)
Re TC’s post above: I’ve heard Counter say in contract negotiations: “Negotiate early, and you’ll get a better deal than you’ll get after you strike.”
And I’ve also heard Counter say that has always been the case when strikes have occurred. (I haven’t verified the truth of those statements, but I tend to believe them.)
Steve:
I tend to agree with your prediction.
As for Counter, well…yes, there is a strong argument to be made that our union will never “win” a strike again.
This is an argument that I think the companies believe. And if I’m right, it means all this stuff about “strike threats” is wasted energy.
The NHL Players’ Union sure found that out the hard way.
For those of you saying “oh, we shouldn’t strike,” I have bad news for you: Anyone who thinks a multinational company will give them ANY share of the profits without a threat is a fool. If they could, the AMPTP would pay Writers NOTHING. Volunteering to lay down your ONLY serious threat (a strike) before negotiations even begin is the way a Loser negotiates.
Imagine walking into a car dealership and sighing and saying “Well, you’re bound to fleece me, no matter what I do, so how about I just pay you $5000 over the sticker price. Deal?” That’s what you guys are doing with all your surrender-monkey defeatism talk.
You act like these corporations are megalithic money-earning machines who don’t need us. You are wrong.
With TV audiences smaller than ever, NOW is the time to threaten them with a walkout.
With business models undetermined, NOW is the time to demand 1.2% of ALL profits, regardless of delivery mechanism, for all time and in perpetuity through the known and any unknown universes (hmm, language sound familiar?)
And with young eyeballs increasingly going to videogames, NOW is the time to lock all videogames produced by the AMPTP to WGA Writers. Before Warner Bros is making 35% of their income from videogames, not AFTER. Because if we wait for AFTER, then we’ll get nothing. And if you think I don’t know what I’m talking about, reflect on this: Happy Feet made $326 million at the box office, but the Happy Feet videogame sold 2 million copies at $50 each in it’s first two weeks on the market ($100 million in WB’s pocket, residuals-free) and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment is currently angling to become the #5 videogame publisher.
But no, let’s put all these issues off for another day because we’re afraid of a strike. OR, we could stop buying $60,000 cars and $5000 watches and actually SAVE some of our massively inflated paychecks and prepare for a possible strike which looks to have as much importance in the long-term health of this Guild as the calamitous 1985 contract negotiations did.
Even if you don’t support a strike, ease back on saying it. It’s like ANNOUNCING that you’re bringing a knife to the gunfight. Surrender talk helps no one but the AMPTP.
Micah:
If that kind of rhetoric actually worked, don’t you think we would have tried it by now?
I’m being serious.
The WGA walked out for nearly a half-year in 1988 and got nothing. In 1988, we had almost 100% jurisdiction over primetime TV. Today, we have far less, meaning that the companies’ ability to weather a strike is even greater than it was in ‘88 when they crushed us anyway.
To further my point, you talk about getting WGA jurisdiction over videogames from movies…like the Happy Feet game.
Two things about that.
First, the Happy Feet video game isn’t even made by Warner Brothers. They sold a license to Midway Games.
Secondly, we can’t even get coverage for writers of the MOVIE of Happy Feet!
The truth is that the strike threat is an increasingly poor threat, because the companies know that they can always outlast us, and their ability to do so increases with every passing year.
I think a far better threat is draconian MBA enforcement, using our contract as a club to hold their feet to the fire on every single violation. The fact is that they violate our contract all the time, but our legal department and ability to enforce the law that governs our work is diminished and anemic.
With all due respect, your speech above feels like it was pulled out of a time capsule. Those days are over. We need a new method. Patric tried organizing. It failed spectacularly.
We should try enforcement next. I think it’s our only real valuable weapon, and it would actually help writers…for a change.
Craig -
One of the big promises made by the current WGAw board when they came into power was signing up reality writers/producers. I have a three part question: 1) has the guild been successful in doing this? and 2) If they have not, why hasn’t it been successful? 3) If they have not been successful, doesn’t that weaken our postition in terms of negotiations?
Thanks
Jon Hotchkiss
Jon:
Easy questions to answer.
No. They haven’t gotten jurisdiction over one single show.
They failed because their strategy was deeply flawed.
No, our position is the same as it was before they started all of this stuff. On the down side, they’ve spent millions getting us nowhere.
Craig —
One more question. And this is a hard one.
Where do you stand on this issue: There are many members of the WGA who do TV jobs on non-guild shows. Some as writers, some as producers, some as show-runners. If there is a strike and guild members are working on NON-Guild shows in the capacity of producer or show runner (and aren’t, in fact, actually doing writing) — do WGA members owe it to their brethern to walk off the job, too?
Thanks for tackling this one.
Jon Hotchkiss