News & Commentary May 2, 2023

[Omaha Steve]

https://onlabor.org/may-2-2023/

By Iman Masmoudi

Iman Masmoudi is a student at Harvard Law School.

The Writers’ Guild is officially on strike; job openings have declined again; workers continue to protest in France.

Last night, the Writers’ Guild of America announced that they voted to authorize a national strike which would begin today, Tuesday, May 2, and the announcement was greeted with jubilation and support across Hollywood. The strike includes almost 20,000 workers who are asking for a restructuring of compensation contracts which haven’t adjusted to respond to the new revenue models based on online streaming rather than TV advertisements. As corporate profits have gone up, writers are left with a smaller share of the fruits of their labor, and their pay has gone down over the past 10 years as a consequence. In response, company negotiators claim the primary sticking points were on staffing levels rather than compensation at the major studios, including companies as varied as Paramount, Apple, and Netflix. Interestingly, previous reporting has shown that the union is also negotiating over use of artificial intelligence in the industry, indicating perhaps that writers view some forms of AI as a potential threat to job security. For now, short turn-over late night shows will go off air immediately, meanwhile viewers will see other effects from this strike on a longer timeline of months and even years. The W.G.A. views this moment as “existential” and said, “the survival of writing as a profession is at stake in this negotiation.”

FULL story at link above.