Brian by Starlight

A New Low for Writers Guild of America Tactics?

Monday, January 14th, 2008 — 8:13am (PST)

I sympathize with Writers Guild of America writers, wholike most people in the world, I suspectare apparently lacking satisfactory compensation for their work. Unlike most people, though, WGA members wield tremendous power to sway public opinion in favor of their cause—general writing and persuasion skills, obviously, but also support from multiple unions and powerful individuals in the media.

I don't have a problem with anyone refusing to work without satisfactory compensation, I don't have a problem with people seeking public support for their causes, and I don't even have a problem with collective bargaining, but I have serious problems with the tactics unions and their workers sometimes use and this WGA strike seems to be dragging things down to a new low. Apparently not content to refuse work and factually detail their grievances while negotiating, the WGA and its members have been misleading the public about compensation by spreading highly dubious generalized claims about writers not being paid for work distributed in particular ways. While it may be true that some or even most WGA writers are paid strictly via residuals and receive no advances and no hourly wage or salary, that does not seem to be the story that the WGA and its members are presenting.

The story I am hearing from the WGA and its members sounds a lot like cooks complaining about not being paid extra for you taking your food to eat it at home or at the park after the cooks were already paid to prepare the food. If that is accurate for even some WGA writers then the WGA generalization is misleading, but if it is accurate for none or few then the WGA has done a poor job of informing the public about the extent of the situations of its writers.

I am also disappointed to see the WGA strike employing typical union tactics of preventing other people from working—both non-union competitors and hapless workers with jobs inter-dependent with those of the writers—and hassling people for doing their jobs, receiving recognition for work well done, or otherwise conducting their lives as usual. Why shouldn't a presidential candidate seek support through media interviews and other appearances? Why shouldn't someone—even someone on strike—participate in an award ceremony for work done prior to the strike or at least allow such a ceremony to proceed without threat of disturbance?

Ah yes—threats. Unions seem to be all about threats: if you are an employer, give them what they want or they will economically harm you (and themselves); do not oppose them or they will economically harm you; do not work despite them or they will economically harm you and possibly physically harm you as well; do not do anything of which they do not approve or they will harm you in one way, another, or possibly both. So much for wanting what is fair.

I didn't set out to write about typical union tactics, though; I set out to write about a new low for them. The Writers Guild of America, through its wgamerica user account on YouTube, seems to have taken up spamming now as well. Its "UnitedHollywood.com Short Film Festival Contest" video seems to have been posted at least three separate times—unchanged, as far as I can tell—with the first heavily commented posting now absent from the site, but two new low-comment postings (here and here) having been posted on the same day (January 8) in the same category ("Film & Animation") with the same tags ("wga", "strike", "writers", "Buffy", "vampire", "slayer", "negotiations", "united", "hollywood", "tv", "film", "labor", "union", and "news") and with the same description text except for the capitalization of the first letter in each of three words ("Short Film Festival" versus "short film festival"). Regardless of what they might have to say to me, I am not inclined to feel sorry for spammers.