US writers' strike - a question
Nov. 6th, 2007 09:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
innocent_lexI understand the writers want to go on strike to get a better deal when it comes to royalties. This seems understandable from their perspective, and taken in isolation. But this does seem to be bringing production of many, many shows (and, I'm guessing, films?) to a grinding halt. Surely that halt doesn't just affect writers, it affects everyone from producers to actors to lighting to sound to costume folks to make-up artists to the tea boy. Are these people still being paid or has everything just stopped? How does this work for all of those people for whom this is their livelihood that is being taken away due to the strike?
Surely I must be missing something here. I'm trying to think of an equivalent, and the closest I can get is a team of contractors, say builders, who can't work because all material deliveries have been halted as truck drivers are on strike. The end customer isn't getting the product, most of the team aren't working and aren't getting paid (and for about half of them that means cutting back on even basic necessities at home), and at the end of a couple of months (or more) the truck drivers might get another tenner an hour.
If that really is the case with the writers, they obviously have a hell of a lot of power and whoever it is they're fighting to get a better deal will surely give in in the end, but not before plenty of people have been hurt by this. There *must* be something I'm missing. There must be a fund or contractual obligations or *something* to pay the people who are being affected. Surely there is.
Surely I must be missing something here. I'm trying to think of an equivalent, and the closest I can get is a team of contractors, say builders, who can't work because all material deliveries have been halted as truck drivers are on strike. The end customer isn't getting the product, most of the team aren't working and aren't getting paid (and for about half of them that means cutting back on even basic necessities at home), and at the end of a couple of months (or more) the truck drivers might get another tenner an hour.
If that really is the case with the writers, they obviously have a hell of a lot of power and whoever it is they're fighting to get a better deal will surely give in in the end, but not before plenty of people have been hurt by this. There *must* be something I'm missing. There must be a fund or contractual obligations or *something* to pay the people who are being affected. Surely there is.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-08 01:42 am (UTC)Many outside the union, such as actors, are supporting the strike. The actor's and director's guild are planning a strike next year, for exactly the same reason -- new media. Their POV is the producers are making quite a bit of money from selling DVDs, downloads of episodes, etc., and they haven't gotten a raise for that sort of thing.
However, if all of these groups get a raise, you can almost guarantee the producers won't take the cut, but they'll pass the cost on to consumers.