Strike Memories

The last major entertainment industry strike was the Writers Guild of America's job action in 2007-2008. It went on for over three months, but at the end of all the picketing, meetings and late-night negotiation sessions, the Guild had a contract that covered New Media (entertainment received over the internet: Streaming Video On Demand). ...

It was early 2006 when Damon Lindelof headed down to the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica to see advertisements for his television series Lost, then in its second season on ABC, blanketing the Apple Store. In that moment, he was tickled by the cachet of having his sci-fi creation be among the first series to roll out on Apple products. A few hours later, however, he got what his 11-year-old refers to as the "uh-oh" feeling. "It's when your body is telling you that something is wrong," he explains. "People were downloading Lost and paying $1.99 an episode. … I didn't quite make the leap to, 'I don't get compensated for this at all.'"

A year and a half later, he would. As would 12,000 other screenwriters who joined Lindelof on picket lines in Los Angeles and New York, as the Writers Guild of America waged war on the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers largely over pay for work that's distributed via the internet, iPods, cellphones and other new media. The work stoppage — the industry's first in nearly two decades — ultimately lasted 100 days and, according to the Milken Institute, took a $2.1 billion toll on the L.A. economy. ...

One of the major reasons WGA members were willing to strike? Many writers believed they'd gotten hosed by the entertainment conglomerates over residual payments for videocasettes and DVDs. Decades before, the companies said "Well, we don't know how this VHS thing will play out, so take a smaller percentage of the revenue now, and we'll take care of you later." But it turned out, there was no "later", which made the trust factor between the bargaining parties pretty much non-existent.

So ultimately (inevitably?) the writers hit the bricks. And the strike of 2007-2008 impacted most other entertainment unions in Hollywood. Grips, cinematographers, costumers, set decorators and make-up artists were all out of work as production shut down on soundstages and sets in Southern California and elsewhere. The animation Guild, however, was mostly unaffected.

Mostly.

Early on, the WGA set out strike guidelines that prohibited WGA members who were also Animation Guild members from writing on TAG shows. This was a legal no-no, and prompted the Animation Guild and the IATSE to threaten lawsuits. After an exchange of letters, the WGA revised its guidelines.

As the strike rolled on, various tempers grew short. (I picketed with the WGA in front of Universal multiple times and heard some of the angst.) WGA members fretted that the Directors Guild would swoop in and cut its own New Media deal while the writers were still out; ultimately that's precisely what happened. The DGA negotiated a new contract that set the parameters for other deals during '08-'09 negotiation cycle. For the IA and the Animation Guild, negotiations were particularly dicey, since the biggest recession in eighty years came down like an avalanche in the middle of them.

Ten years further on, it's clear how important it was for entertainment union and guilds gaining recognition over New Media turned out to be. Huge numbers and writers (also board artists and animators) are employed under the New Media clauses within industry contracts. Those clauses are from perfect, but individuals are far better off than if there were no coverage for New Media at all.