Writers Explain Why WGA Strike Is Important to Them

I've worked for Disney and Hula. I've worked for Netflix. I've worked for Late Night with Seth Meyers on NBC. In the last five years, it's not a long time, five years. The general income for writers has dropped by 14%. Writing rooms are a lot smaller, and the duration of those writing rooms are a lot shorter. There's a lot of work that is not rewarded in the same way that it was before the streaming era, but writers are still doing that work.

I'm fortunate in that I was on a show last season that went on for close to a year. And I don't know that the next show that I get on, I'll have that same fortune. And I hate the fact that as writers, we're being forced to make a decision whether we want to continue this path or we want to get food in our stomachs, a roof over our heads. Right now, we work almost as gig workers. We're in a room scared because the rooms are shortened so much that we have to be scrambling to find the next job, et cetera. We are very reasonably asking for fair pay in the form of residuals based on who watches the shows that we write and create for those studios. And we're fighting for the new generation of showrunners.

Showrunners are someone who runs the show to not be bullied into making their room small because they want their projects greenlit. Writers' rooms are bigger than just the things that they're creating. I identify as queer and Latinx. And sadly, a lot of writers of color are in the lower ranks of a writer's room. Those lower level writers, when they do write their own script at this point in time, they don't even get paid for their script itself. They just get paid a flat salary. And as you go up the ranks, then you not only get your salary, but then every script you write, you get a fee for that script.

So we're fighting for that as well. If we don't get the opportunities to move up in the ranks of a writer's room, we won't get the opportunity to pitch and sell shows that have our identities, that have our story. We're all out here regardless of our position. We are all here because we love the profession of writing and we love what we do. The pie is big enough for all of us, you know? So we just need to recognize that people should be paid what they're worth and it'll actually make the pie even bigger.

NowThis, news, writers strike, writers guild of america, hollywood writers strike 2023, writers strike 2023, writers strike 2023 update, writers strike conan, writers strike explained, writers strike update, writers strike 2023 explained, writers guild of america strike, writers guild of america awards 2023, wga, wga strike