We’re all more aware of Hollywood’s less glamorous side since the Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) went on strike on May 2nd. Horror stories have emerged from both newbie and well-established screenwriters, many of whom are finding it impossible to make a living in the streaming age.
Emmy-winning writer Alex O’Keefe recently told the BBC that he had only six dollars in his bank account, while other writers have spoken out about living on food stamps or supplementing their income with retail or food service work.
The emerging narrative makes it clear that writing for the screen is often no longer a solid career path. However, some people outside the industry are less than inspired by the strike-proof fall TV lineup, or the fact that production shutdowns have affected everything from Stranger Things to Yellow Jackets.
A population accustomed to instant gratification via endless binge-watching is now faced with the looming threat of no new content besides Steve Harvey’s dubious legal circus. This makes Hollywood writers seem ungrateful, over-demanding, and even greedy to some.
When we think of folks like Mike Sher, Sam Levinson, or Shonda Rhimes, we imagine people with fun and cushy jobs and even cushier bank accounts. It’s hard to feel too much solidarity with these folks when many of us have full-time jobs and struggle to pay rent. But does that perspective miss the point? Not just because it’s misleading to fixate on the top 20 most successful players in a union of over 11,000. What’s more, could the backlash to the strike reveal something about how labor movements function in America? Well, let’s find out in this Wisecrack Edition on the WGA strike:
Why Should We Care?
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For now, let’s get back to the show. Okay, so negotiations between the WGA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (the AMPTP) wrote down when the AMPTP refused to agree to new WGA demands, such as higher wages and minimum amounts of writers per TV show, an overwhelming majority of members voted in favor of a strike, and as of May 2nd, all work towards writing the shows and movies to give us joy in a broken world has ceased.
The WGA’s said that a Studio’s responses to our proposals have been wholly insufficient, given the existential crisis writers are facing - which might sound odd, because aren’t we supposedly in the era of peak TV, and there’s more content being made than ever before? So why all the complaining?
Well, for one, the WGA noted that 98% of Staff Writers - which is the entry level - are making minimum pay. The same goes for 95% of Writers, the next level up, called Story Editors. Among the next two highest rungs, nearly 60% are making Union minimums. Basically, what used to be a baseline for compensation has now become the norm.
At the same time, writers are feeling the squeeze in a variety of ways - they’re being hired for fewer weeks to do the same amount of work, laboring in many rooms with smaller staffs, and seeing minuscule residuals for shows on streaming platforms.
Now, residuals, or payments made to writers when the shows are re-aired, were first introduced after the WGA strike in 1960, and they were once essential to making writing for TV a sustainable career. They’re also why anyone who wrote on a show like Friends or Seinfeld could warm themselves in the winter by just burning piles of money, while your frozen bones watch outside their windows, shivering.
Now, many rooms also mean fewer jobs overall for many new writers trying to land a first or second job. Writing through TV is becoming like gig work, where…