The biggest machine of cultural creation and production on the planet came to a sudden halt yesterday for the first time in 15 years. The nearly 11,500 screenwriters and Hollywood film and television began a strike to protest about working conditions and wages that they consider unfair and outdated. The measure puts the entire entertainment sector in a commitment, yesterday and today: from the big film companies of all time, such as Universal or Paramount, to the relatively new streaming platforms, such as Netflix, Amazon or Apple, passing through those that combine both formats – such as Disney – and through American television programs of interviews and humor, such as Saturday Night Live or The Late Show. And all this when the industry is still trying to recover from the complex effects of the pandemic.
The stoppage began at midnight on the West Coast of the USA (nine o’clock yesterday morning in Barcelona), after the one and a half month period that both conflicting parties, the Guild, ended without an agreement of Writers of America (WGA) and the Alliance of Film and Television Producers (Amptp), had agreed to negotiate. The strike had the prior approval of 98% of the voting members of the WGA.
The demands center on better wages and more employment opportunities. Screenwriters complain of substantial losses of jobs and money in multiple ways linked to the change of model in the dissemination and consumption of audiovisual products.
On the one hand, while the amount of scripted TV shows airing in the US has skyrocketed over the past decade, scriptwriters’ wages have stagnated. On the other hand, if with conventional network television a writer could sell his services in a program with more than 20 episodes per season, with the emergence of streaming the orders were reduced to 8 or 12 episodes, with the consequent decrease in his salary. Also, in the previous era writers received residual payments whenever the show was re-licensed, either under the syndication formula or through DVD sales, with global streaming services such as Netflix or Amazon, these other distribution windows disappeared and the residual payment became unique for each production.
In sum, and according to the large convening union, “the working conditions of series writers have worsened at all levels, while platforms and transmission services continue to benefit”.
The union responds that it offered “generous increases in compensation” to the writers, but complains about the union’s insistence that companies hire shows with a certain number of writers for a certain period of time, regardless of whether the services of all are necessary or not.
The impact of the strike will obviously depend on the duration, which at the outset seems to be long, and will go by neighbourhood. Comedy shows, which depend on writers for everything, are being slowed down. Series and movies, on the other hand, will only notice the long-term shutdown due to extensive production processes.
According to the companies in the branch, about 20,000 people who work in about 600 productions could be out of a job if the stoppage extends for a considerable time. As for the economic damages, it is impossible to make a calculation. The strike in 2007 caused economic damages amounting to 2.1 billion euros, mainly in Southern California. The figure, adjusted to current costs, is equivalent to 3,000 million today. But the sector has changed so much these more than 15 years that the reference has a very limited validity.
The convening guild spoke of “completely insufficient answers from the studios” to the requests, given “the existential crisis that writers face”. And he added that they have “pulled the trigger” only after six weeks of intense negotiations with Netflix, Amazon, Apple, Disney, Discovery-Warner, NBC Universal, Paramount and Sony.
The failed talks included as a major innovation the scriptwriters’ request to impose significant barriers to the use of artificial intelligence. In the words of Mike Schur, WGA member and author of The Good Place series, it’s about “drawing a line in the sand” right now and proclaiming, “Writers are human beings.”
Just the approach scares me.
