Adam Conover-Member of the negotiating committee, creator of Adam Ruins Everything
At 12:01 yesterday morning The Writers Guild of America officially went on strike after 97.85% of voting members voted yes to authorize a strike.
Why the strike is happening is easy enough to figure out. Writers are simply not being paid enough. As streaming popularity has risen, median writer pay has declined 23% (when adjusted for inflation). Half of all writers are now working at the minimum basic agreement, and a quarter of all showrunners. With the new focus on shorter seasons for a lot of streaming services, writers are working shorter seasons, which also means less compensation. The Guild has tried to combat this by introducing something called span protection. Basically an episode written is compensated by 2.4 weeks of work, that way an episode that takes longer than a week to write is still compensated fairly. Even those protections haven’t done much to help plummeting paychecks. They are currently trying to get that bumped up to 3 weeks. https://bit.ly/3LU49Uo Here’s a link to what they’re asking for.
This is where I’m going to ask you to do something. Please support this strike. Late night shows have already started airing reruns. If this strike goes for a long time your favorite shows will be affected. Yellowjackets writers were at work for season 3 for one day, that will probably be delayed. It’s going to suck. This is not the fault of the writers. This is the fault of the streaming services. The writers are negotiating with Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures, Universal Pictures, Walt Disney Studios and Warner Bros. These companies make billions, and writers are the ones creating the worlds and characters we love so much. Please support.
“I think we’re getting to the point where it’s going to be that the only people who can afford to try to start a career in television or movies are going to be people who are independently wealthy already, which I don’t think is good for television or movies. I don’t think we want that,” – Bob Waksberg
