<p>“You do the writing…We’ll do the fighting” “Understanding Labor Unions with the Writer’s Guild of America”</p><p>(01:16) Mona Mangan: I think when you look at unions in America, you see that they are changing a lot. They used to represent people who manufactured, who made things. But you know, if factories close and industries move outside of the United States, unions have to deal with, with the workers who are left. And the people who do those kinds of jobs are not unionized. They have no history of being unionized. These are new jobs, all the jobs created by the growth of the computer. The television programs that everybody watches all aren’t just out of the heads of the people who are saying those words but they are our words. We write those scripts.</p><p>(01:52) Man: Scene 1, take 1…mark.</p><p>(02:00) Mona Mangan: The guild has been doing what it does, which is representing writers, for more than 50 years. You know, for a long time, when somebody wrote a movie, they didn’t put his name on it, or her name on it, they put the name, the producer put the name of his girlfriend or his brother-in-law or his friend…and they just ignored the writer. And that’s how the writer’s guild formed. Lot’s of very angry writers who said, ‘we want credit for our work’. </p><p>The first contract that the writer’s guild ever had with companies was providing assurance that they would get credit for their work and that somebody else wouldn’t get the credit. </p><p>The writer’s guild represents writers who write for motion pictures, television. We represent lot of people who write in radio, we represent news writers who write for some of the networks and local stations who write the news. We represent some graphic artists who work in television. We represent a little bit of the internet. The internet is an area we are organizing in because it’s a new area and we need to help people protect their work and be properly paid in those areas. It’s a do-gooder organization. We don’t make money; we’re a not-for-profit corporation. We want to help writers, we want to represent them, we want to make their lives safer and better and more productive.</p><p>(03:10) Chris Albers: I got involved with the WGA because we had a couple of issues at NBC that we wanted to deal with. And I continued to get more and more involved because I really became fascinated with the idea that you can actually make a difference. It sounds hokey, but you can actually change the debate, you can change what we are going after for the contract, you can help bring up issues that are really concerning your coworkers and other writers. And it’s nice to have that line of communication open.</p><p>(03:57) Man in Meeting: …people that we’re trying to attract, you know, they think labor movement as something for miners or teamsters and that isn’t appealing, I don’t think for young people. They don’t want to do that, they don’t want that sort of involvement. </p><p>Man in Meeting 2: …they’ve got a ton of ideas and some of them may be awful, but they’re proud of them and they think this is what it is and if I can only get this into Steven Spielberg’s hands, I’ll be lunching with Tom Cruise next Monday and it’s going to be great. (laugher)</p><p>Man in Meeting 3:… I think it is pride and I think that’s what the overwhelming question says to me, is that we’re proud of our words and then it moves on to its work and it’s a guild. I mean, kind of builds from, you know, pride in your authorship and up to the guild.</p><p>(04:35) Chris Albers: I think that one of the greatest compliments that we can be given is if someone says, ‘oh, I thought that Conan came up with all that on his own’, that’s what we’re shooting for. On one level, I guess it’s frustrating because you’re the hidden, behind the camera guy. As far as respect is concerned, that’s definitely an issue with writers. Clearly, all stories, all ideas start with a writer and your favorite tv shows, your favorite movies, and even if you like the show, people say, ‘well, this year wasn’t as good as last year but now they’ve got it back’. And that’s all writing and it comes down to the story and without that you don’t have a business at all. And we’re never trying to break the bank, we never want to be prima donnas, we just want people to respect that we are starting the ball rolling and that without us, the ball doesn’t roll. </p><p>(5:33) Mona Mangan: Well, you know, when you talk about a negotiation, the fantasy is that there’s going to be a winner, there’s going to be a loser, it’s going to be very dramatic and somebody’s going to be beaten down and somebody else is going to rise up. Well, that’s not the way, what a good deal looks like. A good deal looks like, you’re not terribly happy but its okay, and the other side is not terribly happy but it’s okay. That’s a good deal. </p><p>The negotiation we had just this year was like that. We went into it wanting a number of things. We wanted to get a percentage of the amount of money that’s earned in Europe. When we negotiated our contract originally, you showed a movie in the United States and that’s where you made all your money. Now, there’s more money made out of the United States that there is in the United States when you’re showing films. And we said, ‘that’s not fair, we should get a percentage of that foreign market since it’s didn’t even exist before and it’s all new money, and aren’t we entitled to a little share? We wrote it’. And the company said, nope, we’re not doing that. We’ll never give you a percentage. We have to put a cap on it. </p><p>(06:37) MM: The other thing we wanted, we wanted to make money on video cassettes because they sell many more video cassettes now than they ever sold before. We said, ‘for every video cassette you sell, we make three cents’. Not rent, now remember, sell. When the studio sells it to Blockbuster we get three cents. We said, ‘we want four cents’. They said, ‘you have to be kidding, this is ridiculous, we’re not going to give you four cents. Four cents is the earth, the moon, and the stars. Four cents will put us in bankruptcy. Four cents is too much’. And it became very clear in the process of the negotiation that if we wanted that penny in video cassettes we were going to have to have a strike to get it. </p><p>(07:19) Chris Albers: Nobody in the guild really wanted to strike. We certainly wanted our issues taken seriously so there has to be some chance of that happening in order for the companies to see you as a threat. But none of us really wanted to see a strike and in addition to losing our paychecks, there’s a real sobering idea of the fact that you’re going to be putting all your friends and coworkers out of work as well. That’s a lot to have on your shoulders. So, not only did we want to do everything in our effort to avoid a strike for ourselves, but for so many other people as well. </p><p>(08:01) Mona Mangan: So what happened was, we didn’t get our extra penny in video cassettes but we got our percentage of the foreign. Did we love it? No. Did they love it? No. Was it a good deal? Yes.</p><p>Chris Albers: When you reach a settlement you’re thrilled but at the same time, you obviously didn’t get everything and you just come to the decision that what’s on the table right now and the things that we’re still trying to go after aren’t worth putting everybody out of work for right now. Doesn’t mean that those issues aren’t valid and doesn’t mean that they’re not urgent and that they won’t be addressed next time around. </p><p>(08:37) Mona Mangan: And I think the reason we did well was that the members of the union were very supportive of what we asked for. One of the problems you always have in the entertainment business is there are a lot of people who make a lot of money. A lot of money. And then a lot of people who make not very much money and we have to pull together. If those people who do very well say, ‘I can do just fine by myself. I’ll have an agent negotiate for me and forget the rest of you, you’re nothing but a drag on my ability to negotiate’. Then you wouldn’t have a very effective union. </p><p>MM: What we had was something called solidarity. People pulled together, they recognized that they had common interests, that they have to act as a unit if they really want to benefit themselves. And in the negotiation we had most recently, people were very professional and the tempers didn’t get short but I’ve been at negotiations where they have to call in a mediator from the government who comes in and tries to calm everybody down and they’ll put one side in one room and one side in the other and they’ll run back and forth just like the Middle East peace talks. But the time may come when you want something or they want something that the other feels they just can’t give and those are the times we end up having strikes. </p><p>(09:47) MM: And strikes are terribly difficult to go through because they represent people giving up their jobs for a certain period of time. They don’t write that screenplay, they don’t go in and write the newscast, and sometimes someone else attempts to do it, usually not very well, or it may just not get done.</p><p>In 1988 we had a strike that was six months. And the fall season was, simply didn’t go on on television. And the networks lost a lot of money, the studios lost a lot of money, and the writers, of course, lost a lot of money. And it was a really, really tough thing. In 1987, we had two strikes: one against ABC and one against CBS in New York, involving the news writers. What caused that strike was that the networks decided they just wanted to fire people at will. You could work there 30 years and wake up one morning and not work there anymore, and that happens. There are a lot of industries that happens in that aren’t unionized. But the Writer’s Guild had insisted and had in our contract for many years protections against that kind of firing. There had to be a reason. And the companies said, ‘no, we want to do it at will’. We put picket lines around the New York and Washington locations and Chicago locations, and Los Angeles as well of those networks and we asked people not to cross the line. Not to go to work. And the end of it, we got our protections against that but it was very difficult and it was very dramatic and it was very important. </p><p>(11:11) Man: You’d hand in your draft and the production coordinator would wink at you and go, ‘get cash, the checks are bouncing’. </p><p>MM: One of the ways we find out if writers have been paid is when they’re paid what’s called the upfront money, the money they get when they deliver the script, we will be informed by the writer that, in fact, he’s been paid or he hasn’t been paid. The money the writer gets when his work is re-used: the screenwriter’s work is put on pay television, the Friend’s writer’s work is shown in syndication. All those payments that the company makes, the payments are what is called residuals. The money the writer gets for the reuses of his work come to us and we pay the checks out to the writer. And the reason we do that is so we can keep track of all the money, make sure the writer gets paid and correlate it with the records we have in our computers, which will basically tell us weather or not the work has been broadcast or exploited in some fashion and that’s how we keep those records.</p><p>(12:04) MM: Grievances, unfortunately, are really common. What the grievance or grievances means is that somebody broke the contract. A producer hired a writer and didn’t pay them or didn’t pay them correctly or put their film on television and didn’t give them the right credit. If we see, in TV Guide or one of the other sources that are fed into our computer, if we see that the writer, that particular movie was on pay television, our computer looks through all the payments we record to see if the writer got paid. If the writer didn’t get paid properly, the wrong amount or he didn’t get paid at all, we file a grievance. We write a letter to the company, we say, ‘please meet with us, let’s discuss this problem, you didn’t pay the writer correctly for x-film when it aired on pay television’. If the company doesn’t pay the writer and we think the writer should be paid, we have arbitration, a hearing, where the arbitrator hears the companies arguments and our arguments just like any trial, and decides whether or not the writer should be paid or should have his credit corrected or whatever the issue is. So, that’s what we do for the writers. We enforce the contract. </p><p>(13:10) Chris Albers: The guild has organized as many areas of television as they can and certainly almost everything you see on network television is covered. If you get a job on any of, on any show that is covered by the guild, then you have to become a member. But, having said that, it’s certainly not something you’re forced into doing that there’s no benefits from. We get snappy writer’s guild pencils, we get health care, we get a pension, there’s usually a holiday party with a big carved ham. So, there’s little reason to join before you have to but once you do, you’re glad you’re a member. </p><p>(13:15) Mona Mangan: You know, everyone’s got great ideas but it’s very hard to sit down with a blank piece of paper and put your ideas on that paper. Everybody things they could be a writer but not everybody gets it down. There’s a big, big credit at the top of the movie, a film by John Jones, and you say to yourself, what does that mean? A film by John Jones? Well, usually that means that John was the director. But it doesn’t mean he wrote the script. Doesn’t mean he did the hair and the make up. It doesn’t mean he was the gopher. It doesn’t mean he did the cinematography. It just means he was the director. But when you see it, you think to yourself, now, I hope, after you’ve seen this, who wrote that? Who did the other work on it? Was it all one man who did everything or was there somebody else? And when you sit in a theater and those credits go by, that’s the time you get up and get popcorn or you get up and you, and you leave and put your coat on. You never look at those credits but the credits are really important and it’s not just who the actors are. It’s also who directed and who wrote and who did the cinematography and who did the costumes, the sets. It’s a collaborative medium; everybody works together. </p>