If you’re keeping up with entertainment news you’ve surely heard about the looming WGA strike. But here at STEBA, we want to give you all the facts, all the context, and none of the superfluous detail so that you can explain it to your friends like a pro.
Who’s involved?
Writers Guild of America (WGA): Creatives, production staff, and trade workers in Hollywood are represented by several unions. The WGA’s East and West branches represent film and television writers. The union appoints a committee to negotiate on behalf of its thousands of members regarding compensation rates, working hours, and creative rights. The union also provides its members with healthcare and other benefits.
Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP): The bargaining organization that represents TV and film production companies (who employ union labor). This includes the major studios, the broadcast networks, cable networks, streamers, and indie production companies. All entertainment unions negotiate contracts with AMPTP, and all AMPTP member companies must abide by the contract stipulations to engage union labor. When the AMPTP can’t reach an agreement with one of the unions, a strike will occur.
Why now?
The current WGA contract is set to expire on May 1. The WGA negotiates a new contract with AMPTP every 3 years. The previous contract, ratified in July 2020, was seen by both sides as a step towards stability in an industry that had been shuttered during the early days of the pandemic. While both the WGA and the studios always share a mutual interest in work going uninterrupted— such is the theory behind labor negotiations— the summer 2020 deal arrived in a unique environment, and it seems the contract negotiated then pushed larger issues off the table in service of reaching an agreement.
The industry has also changed significantly since the last deal, and it’s the shift to streaming and changes to television production practices that will be topics of contention. While the era of “Peak TV” has resulted in more TV series than ever before, most series are now 8 to 12 episodes long, versus the 22 to 26 that was standard when most new series premiered on networks. Many WGA members are paid episodically, meaning one job on a show will pay less than it would have a decade ago— despite the fact that production for shorter seasons frequently takes as long as production on a standard network season.
This streaming era has also brought an increase in the use of “mini rooms.” A typical writers’ room staffs up to 10 writers at different levels who work together to break plots and character arcs before writing each episode. But with shorter seasons, budget cuts, and changing modes of storytelling, studios are pushing a version of a writers’ room that sees 2 or 3 writers (frequently paid at minimum scale) build out the story with the showrunner and write a script or two over several months, during which they are unable to take other jobs. The showrunner or one head writer might then use this material to write the bulk of the show. All mini rooms are different, but a key issue for the WGA is that writers staffed in mini rooms do not get the experience to work on a show actually in production or receive proper credit, limiting the opportunity for career advancement.
Another issue for the WGA is standardizing residuals— the micropayments writers and other creatives get whenever their work is rerun on TV. This used to be a solid form of income, but streaming residuals are not as profitable for writers. The existence of residuals for streaming platforms (currently called “New Media” in the WGA contracts) is thanks to the union’s last strike— more on that below.
Put simply, writers need a pay raise, and that’s for reasons beyond inflation— studios are actively engaging in practices that depress writers’ earnings as part of larger cost-cutting measures. (Note that content spending and output is still incredibly high; studios have money, but many companies are choosing to spread it very thinly across a historically large number of projects released).
What happens next?
Next week, the WGA is holding a strike authorization vote. A majority of members supporting the strike does not necessarily mean one will occur, but it means one can. Huge margins of members supporting the strike also gives the union leverage in contract negotiations— to oversimplify, it proves the writers are not bluffing. If the WGA and AMPTP don’t reach an agreement by May 1, the writers could strike anytime after. The WGA is generally considered the entertainment union most likely to strike over unsatisfactory negotiations.
What will happen if the strike occurs?
Essentially all scripted television production would shut down. High-profile streaming series that have already been shot would be released as normal through the fall, but the release of network series premiering in the fall would likely be delayed. To limit the consumer impact, networks are greenlighting further seasons of current series earlier than they typically would, in order to keep the shows in continuous production for as long as possible (squeezing as many episodes as they can out of the current production team before the strike occurs). If the strike lasts longer than a month, expect fewer streaming series at the beginning of next year. The last WGA strike, which lasted 100 days in 2007-08 and was a formative time for the contemporary industry, led to the rise of reality television, as most unscripted shows do not employ writers— the exception being some game/competition shows. And, more international shows will be available on linear and streaming.
Films will not suffer as noticeably, but script quality may go down without writers available to make changes as needed. Movie studios are already stockpiling completed scripts in the case of a strike, but that does not avoid this issue.
Lesson: Hollywood is certainly planning for a writers’ strike, though it’s not certain one will happen. Everyone in the industry has different information and Hollywood runs on who knows what, when. But if you ask me, it’s going to happen. The industry is overdue for a strike, and the WGA is asking for a lot in an environment where the studios have all committed to cost-cutting.
Interested in learning more? Check out these resources:
How a Hollywood writers’ strike can derail a great TV show Washington Post
Here’s what happened last time there was a writers’ strike in Hollywood AV Club
The ever-falling dominoes of the last Hollywood strike MovieJawn