The WGA West’s opposition slate, led by presidential candidate Phyllis Nagy, is making its case for taking the guild in a new direction in the WGA’s battle with talent agents. One of their shared b…
“I’m a loyal Guild member with questions and concerns. To address the elephant in the room — I’ve had these questions and concerns for months leading up to and continuing through the current Artists’ Manager Basic Agreement action. Because our Guild’s storied history is a shining example of how to tolerate and encourage freedom of expression in all its forms — I speak frankly and encourage all to speak similarly, with a respect, civility, curiosity and empathy for opposing arguments.
“Leadership has asked for ‘sacrifice’ from membership. Leadership has told us that some of us will ‘suffer.’ That these are necessary conditions to achieve progress. This is absolutely acceptable rhetoric in a strike. There is no question that we’d follow the lead on sacrifice and suffering then.
“I’m also running because our current leadership, while excellent at starting this fight and organizing our membership, has fallen short of winning it. In the weeks to come, I will discuss possible ideas on how to win that fight… although I think my actual willingness to get in the ring and trade punches with the Big Four agencies already sets me apart from many incumbents.
“That’s why the deal we must wrestle from the agents has to put these writers first. I agree with many in current leadership who think it’s morally questionable to take money from a corrupt system… but I only agree as far as that money is kicked back to writers who do not need it. “Our world is changing rapidly. Disney+, Netflix, Amazon and others are making residuals a thing of the past. If we do not focus on practicalities — like residuals, span protections, family leave, etc. — those of us who don’t have nine-figure overall deals are going to be left wondering why our incomes have been cut in half and where our green envelopes have gone.
“Feature writers are getting the short end of the stick. The concerns of feature writers are often very different than those of TV writers. Feature writers pay dues of 1.5% of every dollar they earn. TV writers at the producer level are able to pay no more than WGA minimum. These means that an astonishingly well-compensated showrunner could pay less in dues than a mid-level feature writer. This disparity negatively impacts all of us.
“This is not a strike. It does not impact all writers in the same way. Some among us have overall deals. Some have jobs lined up and can keep working for months or years — they don’t need agents right now. Others don’t have jobs, need their agents, and feel stranded, without guidance and recourse. “In a strike where we’re all not working, our membership has always been — fabulously, admirably, save for a few scabs and cowards — united. We have walked the lines and held the lines together and found strength and comradeship in doing that. This is different. Because we do not suffer equally here, and because this action is taken not against our employers but against our creative partners , some writers may soon feel they have to choose between their families and their Guild.
“Why are we doing this? I believe it is because our current leadership doesn’t know what to do about the emerging business models that are threatening our collective financial future — so they’re sacrificing time and money and goodwill in a prolonged attack on an old business practice that writers and agents blithely engaged in for 40 plus years.
“Regarding showrunners, the guild needs them to be more forthcoming about their hiring practices. Imagine if a few weeks after staffing season, every showrunner had to report to the guild about the demographics of their staff: what levels they hired at, how many women , how many writers of color , how many LGBT+ writers . Now take that information, show by show, and make it public , and the exposure might very well boost diversity numbers.
“And yet we are woefully unprepared for them. There is no sign we have any intention of changing our normal strategy of threatening to strike and hoping for the best. No army would go to war with a single nuke in lieu of tanks and soldiers, yet that’s what we do every three years. We need a better strategy. To be clear: A strike threat is a powerful and critical source of leverage. But for too long, it’s been our only source of leverage and, consequently, our only tactic.
“To be clear: We must address the conflicts of interest inherent in packaging and affiliated production. But the belief that we can do so without negotiating with the ATA is naive at best. Equally naive is the notion that the two litigations which we are presently mired in will provide a way forward. I used to be a litigator and I saw firsthand the limitations of our legal system . Even in the rare instances when justice is done, it takes years to achieve.
“From the beginning, I was outspoken about the dangers of this campaign to women, people of color, and LGBTQIA writers, those that often need agents to advocate on their behalf just to get into the room. My pleas fell on deaf ears. I begged this leadership to reconsider, to present us with a plan that did not include firing our agents before staffing season. The leadership, many of whom were on overall deals , moved forward with the plan anyway.
“There are fewer originals and fewer OWAs than ever before. Studios and networks have learned how to mitigate our leverage and we are not strategically countering them the way we need to. Every year, they get better at it. In the last negotiation, we were forced into a rear-guard action that gave us span “protection” which now gives our employers the legal cover they need to reduce many writer-producers to guild minimums — some writers find themselves making less than these minimums.
“This next fight is an enormous, essential one. For the future of residuals and the concept of a backend. To say our agents’ interests are not aligned with ours isn’t good enough. We have to actively negotiate a real solution, so our interests are aligned. This is an opportunity to invest our time, energy and skill into reinventing our relationship with the agencies.
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