After much debate between the leaders of the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers this past week, the WGA has officially voted to end its strike, bringing the nearly five-month-long conflict to a close.
Besides having to watch reruns of the “Tonight Show” and hearing news of the strike on TV, I didn’t really experience any major differences to my day-to-day life. To me, it feels like strikes are a regular occurrence in the media that usually resolve themselves within a couple of weeks. So what made this one so different from the rest?
The WGA currently holds 11,500 members who write content for films, television shows, news broadcasts and online media shown all around the globe. As viewers, we often don’t account for all of the work that goes into bringing media to our screens, but the simple reality is that if the people behind the scenes can’t work, the cameras don’t roll.
I wasn’t fully knowledgeable of all the reasons behind the strike, and I especially wasn’t aware of the fact that several popular streaming services, such as Netflix, Disney and Warner Bros., were failing to work with the WGA amidst it all to reach a solution.
Many shows expecting new seasons have been stalled due to the strike, such as national favorites like “Stranger Things,” “Abbott Elementary,” “Billions” and “The Last of Us,” to name just a few.
However, the aspect of the strike that attracted the greatest national attention was not the famous corporation names involved, but perhaps the strike’s longer-than- average duration. According to Cornell’s Labor Action Tracker, the majority of strikes in 2022 lasted less than five days. The WGA strike, on the other hand, halted production for a whopping total of 148 days.
The close to five-month-long strike was spent advocating and picketing against the lack of compensation from streaming companies rerunning episodes and the unprotected threats artificial intelligence poses to scriptwriting. The strike led to the loss of approximately 37,700 film jobs, and cost the California economy an estimated $2.1 billion.
Amid the bustle of our daily lives, we can so easily rely on the presence of our comfort shows just waiting for us one simple click away. However, the WGA strike brought to light the true harm streaming services put on screenwriters’ careers, while much of the American public continue on with their lives and poor streaming habits.
For those of us that don’t have jobs in screenwriting or reside in California, or even for those just hearing of the strike for the first time today, there is still work that can be done on your part.
The deal allows for increased compensation for writers and new minimum staffing requirements based on episode counts, while also barring the use of AI for new or rewritten material aired by studios. WGA leaders voted to end the strike, allowing writers to return to work this week and encourage the implementation of the conditions that were reached. The deal is set to be ratified by union members in the upcoming week, who will be able to vote on it from Oct. 2-9.
The lives and issues of our working population deserve more support from all of us, from large scale corporations to even our friends and neighbors. Each of us play a vital role in the media today, as we each rely and interact with it as part of our daily lives.
Writers deserve the chance to be properly recognized for the work they produce, and we must ensure that as a nation, protests advocating for the fair recognition and salaries of our workers do not persist this long without compromise again.
So sign petitions, donate to foundations working for a change and stand with families that were put out of work in both the WGA strike and the SAG-AFTRA strike as well. Tell your friends and family about the situation at hand, and demand that the deal will be implemented and properly followed.
For the sake of our community members working behind the scenes and our nation’s love for cinema and entertainment, don’t overlook the people behind the camera that make this work possible — the world would be a boring place without them.
