I Guess I Planted
Power in a Union
Secret Origin
I’m going to admit something to you. When I first joined the Writers Guild of America in 2011, I was resentful. My writing partner and I had been hustling for a few years and we’d scored our first job as staff writers. All of a sudden, we were being asked to fork over a fee to join a union, not to mention give over a percentage of our earnings and pay quarterly dues too. You don’t make a lot of money as a staff writer on a TV show, especially on a non-network show (which this was). And, as a writing team, we split one paycheck.
(I’ll talk about writing teams in the future, I’m sure, but the biggest drawback to being a team is doing the work of two people and being paid as one. The biggest benefit, and it’s considerable, is that when I really, really don’t want to write a first draft, my partner will do it).
Anyway, I complained about giving away all of this money (on top of agent and manager and lawyer percentages), and my wife made fun of me for being anti-union. Which, I wasn’t, not really; I understood the benefits intellectually. I just didn’t have the practical experience with a union to understand its benefits.
Then my health insurance kicked in.
And my pension. And a year later, when we were out of work, my residuals.
A few years ago, when a company decided not to pay us, the union stepped in and got us paid. The money was a drop in the bucket to this company (seriously, it was just a kill-fee), but it meant that we kept our health insurance for another year.
Bragging Rights
I’m not smart enough to understand the politics and history of union organizing. But it makes sense to me when Billy Bragg sings that there is “power in the hands of a worker.”
If they didn’t know it before, a lot of people have learned in the past few years that corporations do not give a damn about you. But your union does. And I trust my union completely to do what’s best for us to get us the fairest deal possible as they negotiate with companies who, unlike those in past negotiations, do not exist to make movies and television.
Amazon, Apple, and the like? These are companies who make TV and movies like some of my neighbors regard picking up their dogs’ poop—sure, they’ll do it for now, but if it becomes difficult, they’re gonna leave those piles around for us to step in.
I don’t know if that metaphor totally works. The point is, the mega-companies who make the stuff we watch and love don’t care about making that stuff, not really, not at the top. And so this negotiation, as you’ve seen and heard a lot in recent months, is an existential one. And if our WGA leadership—many of whom I know, personally, to be smart, passionate, tireless, and honest—tells us that the best way to gain any kind of advantage against these indifferent conglomorates in order to ensure that media writing continues to exist as a job is to strike, then, yeah, we’re gonna put on our comfortable shoes and pick up our signs and get to marching.
More on Monday.
Thanks!
I’m so flattered that, since I mentioned it on Tuesday, the introductory Script Anatomy class that I’m teaching has sold out. It was great getting my student roster and seeing so many names on there familiar to me from this newsletter! So, thanks. I’m confident that this will be a fun and instructive for us.
Looks like there are still a couple of slots remaining in the Draft Intensive class I’m teaching that begins July 9. As I’ve mentioned before, this is the really fun one where we dig in and take you from outline to draft in three sessions.
My ebay auctions for three boxes of toys are up until tomorrow. There’s a box of new and used Star Wars stuff, a box of TV/movie themed toys, and a box of superheroes (and villains for them to fight or just hang out with).
Please “Buy It Now” and stop denying yourself or your kid something to play with.