2007 Strike Of Writers Guild Of America

Introduction

On November 5, 2007 the Writer’s Guild of America East and the Writer’s Guild of America West initiated a strike against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (Cieply, 2007). The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) is a trade organization that represents the interests of 397 producers in the film and television industries (AMPTP Official Website). The strike lasted 100 days, finally ending on February 12, 2008. The strike put the economy of Los Angeles under severe strain with losses estimateds as high as $2.1 billion. The strike resulted from the regular renegotiation of standard contracts, or the Minimum Basic Agreement with the AMPTP. According to contract proposals from the Writers Guild of America (WGA)WGA, issues arose between the WGA Writers Guild of America (WGA) and the AMPTP over DVD residuals, union jurisdiction of animation and reality program writers, and compensation for digital technology called “вЂ?new media” (WGA Contract 2007 Proposals).

Issues Behind the Strike

Three major issues dominated the contention between the WGA and the AMPTP. The first of these issues is was DVD residuals. Twenty years ago, the dominant media for the home viewer market was VHS tapes. When the industry standards for compensation were developed for this media, production costs for VHS tapes were high and the market for these tapes had not yet taken off. The agreement gave writers 0.3% of the first million reportable gross and 0.36% after the first million sold as residual. At first this was an acceptable arrangement as tapes were selling for between $40 and $100. However, the production technology improved, decreasing production costs. Writers, seeing this, felt short-changed in the arrangement. Even as DVD’s were introduced in the mid-1990s, this arrangement stayed in place and dictated compensation for DVD residuals as well. (Verrier, 2007)

In the negotiations, WGA expressed the importance of residuals as a source of income between periods of employment for writers and requested that the residual rates for DVD sales be doubled to 0.6% (WGA Contract 2007 Proposals). The AMPTP argued that the current formula of 0.3% remain in effect. They also wanted the same formula to apply to digital media. This digital media, also called “вЂ?new mediaвЂ™Ð²Ð‚Ñœ was another issue of contention in the strike. This “вЂ?new mediaвЂ™Ð²Ð‚Ñœ includes Internet downloads, digital telephone media, on-demand video programming, and Internet distributed media (Leopold, 2007). This is a new market and uncharted territory. The easy access to these media forms makes issues of compensation complicated. The AMPTP’s insistence that the old formula for residual compensation be applied to new media harkened back to the introduction of the arrangement as it applied to VHS and writer’s saw history repeating. Once again, despite seeing this “вЂ?new mediaвЂ™Ð²Ð‚Ñœ as the future of distribution, the AMPTP refused to bend to a new agreement due to its unfamiliar and uncharted nature (Internet Media Replacing Traditional Media, 2007 ).

The third major issue encompassed by the writer’s strike is was jurisdiction as it pertains to animated and reality-based media. Reality television, as a genre, has evolved significantly since its inception in the 1980s. In the beginning, shows that displayed “reality” were still scripted and focused on the display of real occurrences. Today, the reality television genre has become focused on the presentation of unscripted event sequences. The AMPTP argued that because of this, the Minimum Basic Agreement should not have any jurisdiction in the area of reality television because without scripts, there are no writers. The WGA counters countered that writers are responsible for the imagination of interesting scenarios that drive the show’s action.

Animation is another highly contested area. The Animation Guild has jurisdiction over animated media and thus the WGA’s Minimum Basic Agreement does not cover animated films. The issue of jurisdiction pertaining to animated media stems from the longstanding disagreement between the Animation Guild and the Writer’s Guild and has been worsened by the recent trend of hiring WGA writers to produce storyboards and participate in the writing of animated features. (Finke, 2007)

Shows of Support

The strike had an industry wide affect that spread far beyond the writers of the WGA. Many other participants in the television and film industry rallied to the cause of the writer’s. While their members were prevented from walking off set in support of other union’s strikes by “вЂ?no strike” agreements in their contracts, the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) supported the strike by refusing to cross WGA picket lines and producing public service announcements (Speechless Campaign for Writers Guild). Many producers who are also writers belonging to the WGA faced difficulties during the strike due to their obligation to perform production duties conflicting with their obligation to refrain from writing duties in support of their union. Many writer-producers chose to honor the picket lines entirely and refused to perform their writing and production duties in support of the strike. (Finke, 2007)

Many related unions showed support for the WGA’s strike. In addition to SAG and AFTRA, mentioned previously, the Service Employees International Union, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, the National Writer’s Union and writer’s guilds around the world also showed their support. (Finke, 2007) The Horror Writer’s Association and the Mystery Writer’s Association also lent their support to the strike.

The Strike

As negotiations of the WGA Minimum Basic Contract got underway, the serious contention on the major issues became evident and both the WGA and the AMPTP anticipated the strike. On the AMPTP side of the house, producers stepped up the pace of production on high priority projects and television episodes in order to get as much accomplished before work stoppages occurred (McNary, 2007). In reaction to this preparation, the WGA chose to initiate the strike earlier than expected to cut down on the preparation time available to the AMPTP. Originally planned for summer 2008 and meant to coincide with the expiration of the