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The Writers Guild Strike is About More than Hollywood Writers

Striking writers picketing at Paramount Studios in Larchmont Village on Day 2 of the WGA Strike.

“We’re very sad we’re out here,” John Rogers, a member of the board of directors of the Writers Guild of America West who lives in Brookside, told the Buzz on Wednesday when we spoke to him on the picket line at Paramount Studies in Larchmont Village.  “We were hoping the companies would recognize the importance of this negotiation. They unfortunately didn’t. As a result, we are forced to use our union power and strike in order to bring them back to the negotiating table in a more receptive manner.”

The Writers Guild of America members voted overwhelmingly to strike after six weeks of talks between the WGA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), the coalition of Hollywood studios and streamers that negotiates with labor unions, failed to produce a new master bargaining agreement. The strike began earlier this week with hundreds of writers picketing studios and companies around the city, including Paramount and Nextflix, both located in the Larchmont Village area.

Rogers told the Buzz the strike is about more than just writers. “The fight we are having is one of the fights many other people have had in other industries,” he said.

“Companies are stripping down the physical production side and the human side so much,  just to chase the stock market valuation, that they are undermining their own actual business,” explained Rogers. “They are making making television harder and worse so they get the stock price up, not so they can make better television, which is their product! We make the only product they sell and we think they should give us what amounts to a 7% percent raise. If we got everything we asked for, it would cost them less than 2 cents on the dollar of profit.”

According to Rogers, the writers have already made a lot of concessions, but they weren’t getting anywhere on some important issues like the use of AI.

“We are the first group to ask for reasonable controls on AI,” said Rogers. “We don’t want them to use our work to train AI and then use it to replace us. In response, the AMPTP
completely refused to address the issue.”

“We are trying to keep the focus on long-term sustainability of the industry,” explained Rogers. “Young writers are not getting the chance to go on set and learn their trade. They are not getting enough weeks to qualify for their health care because they are cutting every contract to the bone. The median income of writers has dropped 25% in the last five years.”

Rogers was a young writer the last time the WGA went on strike, in 2007-2008. Compensation from streaming was the issue then, and most people didn’t even really understand it because it was so new, explained Rogers.

“Streaming is now 50% of our business, and we’d have had no claim on that if we hadn’t won that in last strike,” said Rogers. “This strike is about increasing the minimum that writers are paid. Contracts are much shorter but here’s no reason why you can’t still make a decent living doing 8 episode shows. The companies are certainly making money.”

Every three years, the unions have an opportunity to negotiate a new master bargaining agreement (MBA). Usually, the agreements are negotiated without much drama. In 2017, they had a strike vote, supported by 96% of the members, but they didn’t strike because the issues were resolved in negotiations. Three years ago, the contract was negotiated during the pandemic, and the union decided to postpone major issues until the next contact. Now they are dealing with a lot of those holdover issues from 2020, and the negotiating is much harder. Today, representatives of the AMPTP issued a response rejecting many of the characterizations made by the WGA.

Rogers explained that every time there’s a new form of distribution, they have to go in and fight to modify the contract to make sure writers are compensated.

He said the strike is the only leverage the union has to improve the contracts that affect over 11,000 writers. This year’s contract comes at a time when the industry is just starting to open up to writers of color, LGBTQ+ writers, and women, who Rogers believes should be able to earn a living.

It’s hard to be a writer, even if you are working, it might be a long time in between projects. According to Rogers, only about 2,000 writers are working at any given time.

“Writers aren’t rich. Famous actors are rich. Writers make a living,” said Rogers.

Rogers sees this battle as a fight to rebuild the U.S. economy where people and the work they do are valued. And, he sees unions as the essential to balancing the scales and reducing the huge disparities in salaries.

“If you take the salaries of the eight people who run the biggest entertainment companies for one year, that would more than pay than what we are asking for 11,000 writers,” said Rogers.

And it shouldn’t be just limited to writers. Rogers said he thinks everyone should be able to unionize and fight for more money. “This is how we fix it.”

Soon, there could be a lot more people joining the picket lines. The contract for the DGA (Directors Guild of America) expires May 10, and shortly after that the SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild and American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) contract expires in June.

Rogers is hopeful that WGA will eventually prevail, and he said he really appreciates the support so many other union members have shown the writers. He said he also thinks this is a moment in the U.S. when people are realizing that the focus on short-term stock market gain has really hurt American workers, and it’s time to make a correction by making different choices.

His recent post on Twitter had over 2.6 million views.

What we can we do?

To Larchmont’s restaurants and coffee shops, Rogers said, “Keep making the excellent food because we go down there after we get off the strike line.”

As for rest of us, “Be supportive and sympathetic when people talk about it. Can you help the WGA? No, but you can help what the WGA is trying to do, protect a working future for workers in every field,” said Rogers.

John Rogers, board member of the Writers Guild of America West picketing at Paramount Studios on day 2 of the writers strike.
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Patricia Lombard
Patricia Lombard
Patricia Lombard is the publisher of the Larchmont Buzz. Patty lives with her family in Fremont Place. She has been active in neighborhood issues since moving here in 1989. Her pictorial history, "Larchmont" for Arcadia Press is available at Chevalier's Books.

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