#writers guild strike

[hyacinthsdiamonds]

Production houses: but if the writers stay on strike we can't guarantee the future safety of your favorite shows 🥺🥺😭😭

Viewers who 1, have already lost their favorite shows because they were cancelled in spite of good ratings and good reviews or 2, have stopped watching new content entirely until the entire series has aired and concluded as a result of so many good shows getting cancelled on cliffhangers and thus leaving said viewers unable to gain closure with those characters and with a hollow viewing experience, so they've begun a, watching older shows they know came to a planned conclusion or b, revisiting their old favorites and enjoying the nostalgia or c, reading new books or fanfic instead: YOU ALREADY CAN'T GUARANTEE THE FUTURE OF OUR SHOWS SO GET FUCKING WRECKED AND PAY WRITERS WHAT THEY DESERVE!

#wga strike #support the strikes #writer's strike #writers guild of america #writers guild strike #edit; well this blew up a little #i just wanted to add that all our favorite shows are absolutely nothing without their writers #the bare freaking minimum is that those writers get paid a liveable wage #they are so underappreciated even though tptb would have nothing without them #a living wage is the bare freaking minimum pay them what they're worth for the work they do

[dduane]

Hello.

I've seen you posting detailed information about the WGA strike and wondered if you had any suggestions as to how those of us not directly involved can show our support for the Union?

Okay, bearing in mind that all this is entirely subjective at the moment (and so far lacking any more useful input from other sources): a few thoughts.

This will be my third WGA strike. (My first one was in 1988, just after I'd made my first live action sale—s1e6 of ST:TNG). And the thought keeps occurring to me at the moment that this time out, there's a potentially gamechanging player on the field that wasn't there before: truly pervasive social media.

(Adding a cut here, because this goes on a bit...)

In 2007, social media as we now understand it was still in its cradle. Now, though, those of us who're striking can make our voices much more widely heard. And so can those of us who're not, but just want to show solidarity. Last time, the AMPTP was able to do pretty much what it wanted without the public noticing or having even a medium-profile way to make their feelings known. But this time? Not so much.

So as an otherwise uninvolved person who wants to show solidarity, I'd start with something seemingly low-value. If I was on Twitter, I'd start routinely tweeting about the strike and my support for it—not obsessively, just persistently, a couple/few times a week—using the Twitter hashtags that are gaining ground even now, such as #DoTheWriteThing (and of course #WGAStrike). I would make sure I was following @WGAEast and @WGAWest, to keep an eye on what's going on.

Additionally: I would start politely, but repeatedly—again, maybe once or twice a week at least, and not stopping—tweeting the various major players in the AMPTP, especially the streamers: Amazon, Netflix, Hulu et al. I would start suggesting that their current attitude toward the WGA's contract negotiations is not only unrealistic but potentially (for the AMPTP) bad for business. (And self-destructive, too, as if this goes on much longer in this vein, they'll be seemingly eagerly casting themselves as The Baddies.) I would suggest that their bad behavior, if not amended by them coming to the table to bargain in good faith, might start affecting both my interest in their shows and my willingness to keep paying unreasonable people for access to them.

I should emphasize here that so far there've been no formal calls from anyone for boycotts or subscription cancellations. For the moment, this strikes me as wise. The point for WGA-friendly observers, right now, would be to keep what's happening to the writers visible: to keep bringing it up: to refuse to allow it to be swept under the rug. The "They only want two cents on the dollar!" angle seems potentially useful the more it's repeated. The point is to keep the repetition going: to make it plain, day after day, that the other side's being not just unreasonable, but greedy. Day after day, and week after week, and (if necessary: please Thoth may it not be...) month after month.

And tweeting is hardly all that can be done. Email is cheap and easy. But actual letters, written on actual paper and mailed, can still create a surprising amount of attention in a corporate office. (The saying in TV used to be that for every person who actually writes in about an issue, there are ten, or a hundred, who feel the same way but never got around to it.) Write letters to all the AMPTP members' CEOs, and make your feelings on the WGA's core demands politely plain. ...Especially when those CEOs collectively made almost three-quarters of a billion-with-a-B dollars in salaries last year, when many of the writers working on their shows can't afford rent.

After that: here's another thought, a little more physical. If by chance you're in an area where one or the other of the Guilds are picketing: turn out and support them! Honk when you pass: and if you're interested, show up and offer to walk the picket lines with them. These things get noticed. (In 2007 a bunch of us, both Guild members and non-, caused significant astonishment by turning out to picket AMPTP members' offices in Dublin.)

...Obviously not all that many people are going to be positioned, in terms of location or their own work and time commitments, to show up physically. But online? Find ways to keep this issue visible. The AMPTP wants this to go quiet, wants people to get bored with it, wants people to find reasons to blame the writers. They've tried spinning the story that way before. Don't let them pull that shit. Find ways to back those who're calling them on that, publicly. They do respond to this kind of thing (though they may strenuously deny it). If enough attention continues to be paid by the general public, they will blink—if sometimes excruciatingly slowly, as Disney began to blink over the dispute tagged #DisneyMustPay.

As viewers, and as viewers who pay for subscriptions to things, we far outnumber them. Help be a part of making the AMPTP understand that this quest for a truly fair deal is not going to go away. And the longer they try to act like the Guild's negotiation positions are beneath their notice, the more it's going to hurt them, and the stupider and greedier it's going to make them look.

...That's all I've got for the moment, as I need some lunch. :) ...But I hope this has helped. And thanks for your concern, and your desire to stand in solidarity with us! It's so welcome. :)

ETA: here's a link to the Guild's social media toolkit, for those who'd like to change PFPs or icons, etc., to show their support.

#Writers Guild strike #DoTheWriteThing #WGAStrong

[astonishment-and-dread]

Stand with the entertainment unions to the end

#i stand with the wga #sag aftra #writers strike #writers guild strike #sag aftra strike #writers guild of america #screen actors guild

[bencan-t]

(Source: https://twitter.com/kaludiasays/status/1653261997163569152)

There will hopefully be a lot of info circulating on here about how to support the strike, and I don't want this to go unnoticed.

Stop using ChatGPT, or any "AI" that can be trained to replace artists.

#wga strike #wga strong #writers guild of america #writers guild strike

[fans4wga]

"The studios thought they could handle a strike. They might end up sparking a revolution"

by Mary McNamara

"If you want to start a revolution, tell your workers you’d rather see them lose their homes than offer them fair wages. Then lecture them about how their “unrealistic” demands are “disruptive” to the industry, not to mention disturbing your revels at Versailles, er, Sun Valley.

Honestly, watching the studios turn one strike into two makes you wonder whether any of their executives have ever seen a movie or watched a television show. Scenes of rich overlords sipping Champagne and acting irritated while the crowd howls for bread rarely end well for the Champagne sippers.

This spring, it sometimes seemed like the Hollywood studios represented by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers were actively itching for a writers’ strike. Speculations about why, exactly, ran the gamut: Perhaps it would save a little money in the short run and show the Writers Guild of America (perceived as cocky after its recent ability to force agents out of the packaging business) who’s boss.

More obviously, it might secure the least costly compromise on issues like residuals payments and transparency about viewership.

But the 20,000 members of the WGA are not the only people who, having had their lives and livelihoods upended by the streaming model, want fair pay and assurances about the use of artificial intelligence, among other sticking points. The 160,000 members of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists share many of the writers’ concerns. And recent unforced errors by studio executives, named and anonymous, have suddenly transformed a fight the studios were spoiling for into a public relations war they cannot win.

Even as SAG-AFTRA representatives were seeing a majority of their demands rejected despite a nearly unanimous strike vote, a Deadline story quoted unnamed executives detailing a strategy to bleed striking writers until they come crawling back.

Days later, when an actors’ strike seemed imminent, Disney Chief Executive Bob Iger took time away from the Sun Valley Conference in Idaho not to offer compromise but to lecture. He told CNBC’s David Faber that the unions’ refusal to help out the studios by taking a lesser deal is “very disturbing to me.”

“There’s a level of expectation that they have that is just not realistic,” Iger said. “And they are adding to the set of the challenges that this business is already facing that is, quite frankly, very disruptive.”

If Iger thought his attempt to exec-splain the situation would make actors think twice about walking out, he was very much mistaken. Instead, he handed SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher the perfect opportunity for the kind of speech usually shouted atop the barricades.

“We are the victims here,” she said Thursday, marking the start of the actors’ strike. “We are being victimized by a very greedy entity. I am shocked by the way the people that we have been in business with are treating us. I cannot believe it, quite frankly: How far apart we are on so many things. How they plead poverty, that they’re losing money left and right, when giving hundreds of millions of dollars to their CEOs. It is disgusting. Shame on them. They stand on the wrong side of history at this very moment.”

Cue the cascading strings of “Les Mis,” bolstered by images of the most famous people on the planet walking out in solidarity: the cast of “Oppenheimer” leaving the film’s London premiere; the writers and cast of “The X-Files” reuniting on the picket line.

A few days later, Barry Diller, chairman and senior executive of IAC and Expedia Group and a former Hollywood studio chief, suggested that studio executives and top-earning actors take a 25% pay cut to bring a quick end to the strikes and help prevent “the collapse of the entire industry.”

When Diller is telling executives to take a pay cut to avoid destroying their industry, it is no longer a strike, or even two strikes. It is a last-ditch attempt to prevent le déluge.

Yes, during the 2007-08 writers’ strike, picketers yelled noncomplimentary things at executives as they entered their respective lots. (“What you earnin’, Chernin?” was popular at Fox, where Peter Chernin was chairman and chief executive.) But that was before social media made everything more immediate, incendiary and personal. (Even if they have never seen a movie or TV show, one would think that people heading up media companies would understand how media actually work.)

Even at the most heated moments of the last writers’ strike, executives like Chernin and Iger were seen as people who could be reasoned with — in part because most of the executives were running studios, not conglomerations, but mostly because the pay gap between executives and workers, in Hollywood and across the country, had not yet widened to the reprehensible chasm it has since.

Now, the massive eight- and nine-figure salaries of studio heads alongside photos of pitiably small residual checks are paraded across legacy and social media like historical illustrations of monarchs growing fat as their people starve. Proof that, no matter how loudly the studios claim otherwise, there is plenty of money to go around.

Topping that list is Warner Bros. Discovery Chief Executive Davd Zaslav. Having re-named HBO Max just Max and made cuts to the beloved Turner Classic Movies, among other unpopular moves, Zaslav has become a symbol of the cold-hearted, highly compensated executive that the writers and actors are railing against.

The ferocious criticism of individual executives’ salaries has placed Hollywood’s labor conflict at the center of the conversation about growing wealth disparities in the U.S., which stokes, if not causes, much of this country’s political divisions. It also strengthens the solidarity among the WGA and SAG-AFTRA and with other groups, from hotel workers to UPS employees, in the midst of disputes during what’s been called a “hot labor summer.”

Unfortunately, the heightened antagonism between studio executives and union members also appears to leave little room for the kind of one-on-one negotiation that helped end the 2007-08 writers’ strike. Iger’s provocative statement, and the backlash it provoked, would seem to eliminate him as a potential elder statesman who could work with both sides to help broker a deal.

Absent Diller and his “cut your damn salaries” plan, there are few Hollywood figures with the kind of experience, reputation and relationships to fill the vacuum.

At this point, the only real solution has been offered by actor Mark Ruffalo, who recently suggested that workers seize the means of production by getting back into the indie business, which is difficult to imagine and not much help for those working in television.

It’s the AMPTP that needs to heed Iger’s admonishment. At a time when the entertainment industry is going through so much disruption, two strikes is the last thing anyone needs, especially when the solution is so simple. If the studios don’t want a full-blown revolution on their hands, they’d be smart to give members of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA contracts they can live with."

#sag-aftra strike #sag strike #fans4wga #writers guild strike #actors guild strike #union solidarity #wga strong #i stand with the wga #wga strike #writers strike

[littlepeninsula]

The way he SLAYYEDD

Ai could never give us “we put the greed in ingredients”

#netflix #wga strike #wga #writers guild strike #writers guild of america #wga solidarity #i stand with the wga #support the wga

[therogerclarkfanclub]

#Kaili Vernoff #sag aftra strong #sag aftra strike #wga strike #support the wga #screen actors guild #writers guild strike

[girl-bateman]

I guess that this is as good of a time as any to remind people that WRITERS MAKE THE STORY!!!! I cannot count how many times I see posts praising tv directors for things that are simply not their doing. That iconic line of dialogue? Yeah a screenwriter wrote that. The characters you love? Screenwriter. The places, the plot lines, the developments? Writers.

A show CANNOT happen without a script because a script is necessary for EVERYONE to do their job right. It dictates what set to look for/create, the filming schedule, the casting calls, the costumes and so on. It's not just words on a paper, its the backbone for all of production and it deserves to get recognised as the integral part of tv and film as it is.

#i dont want to take away the praise for directiors and actors #i just dont want it to be misplaced praise screenwriters as it so often is #i cannot count the times ive seen posts like (x-director) did it again aaaaah i cant believe this #when they're not even the director for that particular episode #and a writer literally wrote the script theyre referring to #im starting to think you guys have no idea how the creative roles behind the scenes work 🥲 #wga strike #wga #writers guild of america #writers guild strike #wga strong

[misalpav]

j saw the percy jackson announcement which is great and I'm excited as hell but let's take a moment to recognize that disney is still not meeting the demands of its writers and actors!! a huge company like disney where the ceo makes ~$20mil/yr should be able to pay writers and actors, without whom disney would not exist at the scale it does today, a livable wage.

edit: I wanted to add for clarification: currently neither wga nor sag aftra are asking us to boycott the shows. since this show was made before the strike, you can and should watch it legally bc as ppl in the notes have said it gets the actors and writers their much needed royalties.

#sag aftra #sag strike #sag afra strike #writers guild of america #wga strike #writers guild strike #percy jackson #disney+ #disney plus #hollywood #movies #tv shows #disney #pjo #percy jackon and the olympians #rick riordan #riordanverse #riordan universe #riordan books

[trendfilmsetter]

The SAG-AFTRA and Writers Guild of America are both on strike together for the first time in 60 years.

“A historic double strike that would effectively shut down the U.S. television and film industries” -Washington Post

Studios are being greedy af. Support the writers, support the actors/actresses/staff. Without them the film and tv industries are non existent.

#sag aftra #sag strike #screen actors guild #writers guild strike

[demigoddessqueens]

The agreement is tentative!!! Keep going strong writers and actors!!

#wga strong #wga #i stand with the wga #wga solidarity #wga strike #wga support #wga 2023 #writers guild of america #writers strike #writers guild strike #sag afra strike #sag aftra #hollywood strike #sag strong #sag solidarity #sag strike #unions #support the wga #screen actors strike #screen actors guild #pro union #union solidarity #support unions #union strong #hot labor summer

[dduane]

Meanwhile, over on Twitter..

(...Source: this article at Variety)

#WGA Strike #Writers Guild strike #Variety #Do The Write Thing

[darlingjmiller]

the shadow and bone writers are at WGA picket lines and if I see a single person saying “but what about all the work we put in to get a season three/crows spinoff!” who fucking cares!! you want the show so bad but don’t care about the people who are creating it? perish.

I will happily forego anymore grisha tv content if that means the people behind it are treated fairly

#and leigh bardugo supports them fyi #the books are infinitely better anyway but that’s Not the point #wga strike #shadow and bone #six of crows #grishaverse #writers guild of america #writers guild strike #s&b #sab #soc

[stankrhodes]

my partner today messaging me about starting a union at his job just... really reinforced in me that we are truly witnessing the rise of a very important moment in history for the future of labor in the world. we shouldn't be living the way we do and my full support is with every single person, union, and entity that is fighting for workers' rights and the security of a livable life.

#strikes #labor movements #ups strike #sag strike #wga strike #writers strike #actors guild strike #writers guild strike #actors strike #wga #ups #sag-aftra #wga strong #sag strong #teamsters #unions #unionize #labor rights #labor unions #organizing #capitalism #teachers strike #nurses strike

[sanyu-thewitch05]

Pay the people who write the phrases and sentences on scripts that make you laugh.

—signed, a future screenwriter

#wga strike #writerscommunity #writers guild of america #writers guild strike #writeblr #arrested development

[fans4wga]

Strike Support Declining - Here's how you can continue to support the writers

Since the WGA strike started on May 2, the public has shown immense support for the writers—sending food, snacks, drinks, and encouragement from across the world all the way to Los Angeles, New York, and other picketing locations.

But loud and vocal strike support—in the news and in public spaces—is notably declining the longer the strike goes on. So we're bringing you a few ways to show writers, studios, and fellow fans: we're still here, and we still stand with the WGA.

1. Post on Twitter (and other social media sites)

You might think social media noise won't be noticed by the studios, but it CAN encourage individual WGA members—and slowly but surely put pressure on the studios to make a fair deal.

If you follow WGA members such as Adam Conover (Adam Ruins Everything), John Rogers (Leverage, Librarians), Gennifer Hutchison (Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul), Javier Grillo-Marxuach (Lost, The Witcher) [and many many more you can find through their following lists], tell them you support them! Hashtag #IStandWithTheWGA #DoTheWriteThing and tell them that you and your fandom are prepared to support them as long as the strike lasts; that they deserve to have their demands met and you're with them all the way. Boost morale however and whenever you can!

Likewise, actively push back against misinformation/disinformation. See a TikTok claiming that all Hollywood writers are filthy rich and we shouldn't vocally support them? Correct it with well-sourced citations from the WGA, published news articles, and stories from those affected (like the time a writer on FX's The Bear attended the an awards show with his bank account balance in the negative, only to then win an award for Best Comedy Series—proving that good writers on award-winning shows still cannot make a living!)

Remember you can always link to Adam Conover's excellent explanation of WGA demands versus studio refusals, tweeted here.

2. Donate or boost fundraisers

You might be surprised to learn that the picketing locations are not always parties! Sometimes themed pickets are fun, and fandoms and celebrities occasionally are able to fundraise for a food truck or ice cream truck at picketing locations. However, that is the EXCEPTION and not the norm. Writers are asking for food & drinks at many locations.

There are many funds to donate to, and it can be overwhelming to pick one! But one that could use your support RIGHT NOW is the CBS Radford picket line:

-If you're in LA, you can bring food and snacks directly to that picket line (or get food deliveries sent there, with instructions to be given to the strike captain on duty.) Strike locations are available on the WGA West website and are updated there.

-Or there's a pizza fund for the strike locations (unfortunately Venmo is a US-only donation option)

-If you're not in LA, donate to the Entertainment Community Fund to support TV and film workers affected by the strike.

-More tips on donating to the strike in this great article!

-Lots of fandoms are organizing donations on their own, for instance the Our Flag Means Death fundraiser on Paypal (updated 30 July 2023 with new link) (available internationally). Check to see if your fandom has started a fundraiser... or start one yourself to show your support! We're happy to give tips on organizing your fandom!

As always, please boost this post and any and all well-sourced information that comes from the WGA or its members. We're happy to fact-check anything you send our way too.

#fans4wga #please boost #i stand with the wga #writers guild strike #current events #wga strike #writers strike