Notes From the Front Lines: The WGA Strike

By Allan Neuwirth

Another cold, gray day on the mean streets of New York City.  It's so frigid out here that I can no longer feel my toes, now ten tiny icicles clinging for dear life to the ends of my feet. 

Nevertheless, we're trudging 'round and 'round and 'round in an extended oval in front of NBC in Rockefeller Center, bundled up Eskimo-style, waving picket signs bearing pithy slogans like "This Space Blank" and "We Write, They Wrong."  Looming over us is a mean-looking, ten-foot-tall inflated rubber pig in a top hat and vest, clutching a giant cigar.  The pig represents the greedy, heartless TV networks and movie studios.  We marchers represent the harried, working class writers and creative types who are being exploited.

As I glance about, I see many of my fellow animation scribes and cartoon show runners.  Largely forgotten by now is the fact that we served as convenient scapegoats for the AMPTP, who announced that unless the Writers Guild of America removed issues like animation from its list of items to be discussed, they'd absolutely refuse to bargain with us. They walked away from the table in early December, and here we are months later (as this newsletter goes to press), still waiting for them to return.

Until this happened, cartoon creators might actually have been the most unified block of members in the WGA . . . mobilized as an official caucus, meeting on a regular basis to plan how we might finally get the studios and networks to extend the same benefits to us that they give to our live action writing counterparts.  Ya know, simple stuff, like health insurance . . . residuals . . . and protection of our on-screen credits - none of which are now afforded us.  Ironically, because we still don't have coverage with the guild, we animation writers who also happen to be WGA members can continue to work and get paid when we’re not out on the streets picketing. It's an odd position to be in, but we still want and deserve basic coverage and benefits for ourselves and our families.

Meanwhile, the larger dispute turned ugly.  You can't even call it a "strike" any more.  More accurately, it became a lockout by management.  Contrary to what many believe, AMPTP does not stand for "Asshole Moguls Pretending To Participate." The AMPTP - the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers - is the bargaining unit that reps over 350 production companies.  Only along the way, it became a bargaining unit that would not bargain, just dictate terms to us.  The DGA recently came to terms with the producers . . . perhaps by the time you’re reading this, that'll have helped us to resolve our issues with them. Or perhaps not.

The whole fracas devolved into a "He said!"/"No, he said!" P.R. campaign. When the AMPTP saw that we had public sympathy on our side, and that all our blogs and YouTube postings were making them look bad, they decided to engage in a public relations war rather than negotiate with us.  That's when they went out and hired a $100,000-plus per month political PR hatchet firm called Fabiani and Lehane, and began employing all sorts of dirty, underhanded tactics usually reserved for smearing political candidates.  Some of the media moguls behind all this have proven themselves to be more distasteful than any of us could have imagined when we had the "audacity" to ask for a few cents more from DVD sales and a few cents, period, from web downloads of our work.  Interesting to what lengths these fabulously wealthy corporations will go when their bottom line is modestly challenged!

So, for now, we're still getting slanted articles fed to the papers and trade publications by the producers' flacks, and reporters continue to "report" how "talks broke down" - not that one side walked away in early December (in an obviously choreographed move) and the other side (us) begged and begged them to come back and bargain in good faith.  One of the few honest and impartial sources of strike news throughout? Nikki Finke's entertaining and pinpoint accurate blog, deadlinehollywooddaily.com.  Check it out.

The schmoozing and networking with our fellow writers and actors have been great at the pickets and strike actions - it's been the silver lining to this whole mess - but I still wish the AMPTP would come back and talk to the Writers Guild.  We can surely reach a fair agreement, if both teams will just lock themselves into a room together for a few days and not come out until they’ve made whatever concessions are necessary.  Again, maybe this process has already begun (am I an optimist or what?) by the time you're reading these words.

Meanwhile, back on the picket line:  One of us just got dizzy from all the marching around in ovals, and had to stop walking so he could lean on a barricade for a few minutes to get over his nausea.  We ALL need to stop walking around in ovals, writers and producers.  Enough!

Allan Neuwirth is a writer, producer, and author.  Recent projects include scripts for the animated series Speed Racer: The Next Generation, Arthur, Word World, and Mama Mirabelle's Home Movies, and publication of Chelsea Boys: Steppin' Out and They'll Never Put That On The Air.