Founded: 1920 as The Writers Club
NAIC: 813930 Labor Unions and Similar Labor Organizations
SIC: 8631 Labor Organizations
Based in Los Angeles, California, Writers Guild of America, West, Inc. (WGAW), is a labor union representing more than 9,500 members, who write for movies, television shows, animation, documentaries, news programs, CD-ROMS, and new-media content. WGAW represents members in contract negotiations and enforcement and determines credits on WGA-covered projects. The guild also provides members with health insurance and a pension plan.
To gain membership in WGAW, writers must accumulate 24 "units" within a three-year period from companies that have signed the Guild's collective bargaining agreement. Sale of a feature-length screenplay, for example, earns a writer 24 units and immediate eligibility to WGAW. Applicants must then pay a $2,500 initial fee, and ongoing dues of 1.5 percent of gross earnings. WGAW also maintains a registry to protect writers from plagiarism, receiving more than 50,000 written works each year. WGAW is affiliated with Writers Guild of America, East. The sister organizations administer the Writers Guild of America Awards. Unlike WGAE, WGAW is not part of the AFL-CIO but is a member of the International Affiliation of Writers Guilds. It is run by a 16-member board of directors.
Writers Band Together in the Early 20th Century
The roots of WGAW reach back to the early 20th century when in 1912 the Authors League of America was formed, its membership mostly comprised of book and magazine writers as well as a few playwrights. In 1921 the playwrights, with their own unique needs, branched off to form the Dramatists Guild within the Authors League, and in turn the Authors Guild was formed to represent book and magazine writers, leaving the Leagues as the parent body of both guilds. During this period writers, many of them League members, had also begun to migrate to the West Coast to work in the fledgling motion picture industry, which at the time was a silent medium but still required the services of writers to develop scenarios and on-screen dialogue.
In 1920 they also formed an organization, the Writers Club, which became part of the Authors League as a screenwriters subsidiary of the Dramatists Guild. As the name suggested, the Club was little more than a social organization in a town very much opposed to unions. Hollywood moguls were not interested in sharing power and sought to head off unionization in 1927 by forming the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to cover writers, actors, directors, producers, and technicians. Although better known today for administering the Academy Awards, this organization was little more than a studio-controlled company union. For - years the Academy succeeded in scuttling any attempts at labor organizing in the motion picture industry. That would change in 1933, however, when Franklin Roosevelt was sworn in as president and began implementing his promised "New Deal," which included improved conditions for unionization.
In February 1933 ten film writers met at the Hollywood Knickerbocker Hotel to discuss how they could improve conditions for writers. They included John Howard Lawson and Lester Cole, politically radical members of New York's New Playwrights Theater; former advertising executive turned playwright Samson Raphaelson, whose play The Jazz Singer was filmed as the first "talkie"; former Chicago newspaperman John Bright and his writing partner Kubec Glasmon, the two men responsible for writing The Public Enemy; Edwin Justus Mayer, a friend of F. Scott Fitzgerald; and Louis Weitzenkorn, former editor of the Socialist Call and writer of the play Five Star Final. The other participants were writers Brian Marlow, Bertram Block, and Courtenay Terrett. They decided to revamp the Writers Club by seeking control of the charter from the Dramatists Guild. A month later the studios implemented a wage cut that provided incentive to the writers and the Writers Club was reorganized as the Screen Writers Guild of the Authors League of America with 173 charter members, most of them under 30 years of age, many under 25. John Howard Lawson was named the Guild's first president, and the organization was incorporated as a nonprofit corporation and the constitution and bylaws rewritten.
Rival Union Vanquished: 1938
The studios were not about to accept the Guild without a fight, of course, and attempted to revive the writers' branch of the Academy. The Guild responded by drawing up an amalgamation plan with the Authors League and Dramatists Guild to in effect control virtually all material available for the screen. Many writers, a large number of whom were studio friendly, then split off from the Guild in May 1936 to form Screen Playwrights, Inc. It was led by Rupert Hughes, uncle of Howard Hughes. The two organizations became bitter enemies, and following the 1937 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that Roosevelt's National Labor Relations Act, which established the right for unions to collectively bargain was constitutional, they battled to gain the right to negotiate for Hollywood writers. In June 1938 the Screen Writers Guild triumphed in Labor Relations Board elections at 13 Hollywood studios, putting an end to the Screen Playwrights, which had enjoyed the tacit support of the studios (having reached a five-year basic agreement with eight major studios) and, according to the New York Times, "charged the Guild with being an agent of Moscow and dedicated to spreading communism."
With no choice, the studios began negotiations with the Guild in 1939. A year later the producers formally recognized the Guild as the collective bargaining agent for writers, and in June 1941 a contract was accepted in principle, although not finalized until 1942. The deal called for minimum pay of $125 per week for all writers (the Guild had asked for $150), and the Guild gained control of screen credits.
Following World War II and the rise of the Cold War between the Western powers and the Soviet Union and its satellites, concerns that communism had infiltrated Hollywood turned into hysteria. The House Un-American Activities Committee summoned a number of writers, actors, directors, and others who were suspected of having been members of the American Communist Party to Washington, D.C., to give testimony in the fall of 1947. Nineteen of them were deemed unfriendly witnesses because they indicated they would refuse to give testimony. Of these, eleven were called, and one, playwright Bertolt Brecht, ultimately testified and promptly fled the country. Ten others, the infamous "Hollywood Ten," refused to admit whether they had ever been members of the party and some attempted to read statements condemning the unconstitutionality of the proceedings. They were ultimately accused of contempt of Congress, convicted, and served one-year prison sentences. The ten included WGA members Alvah Bessie, Lester Cole, Ring Lardner, Jr., John Howard Lawson, Albert Maltz, Samuel Ornitz, Adrian Scott, and Dalton Trumbo. After their release from prison they were blacklisted by the studios, as were others who were named by cooperating witnesses or whose anticommunist bona fides were considered insufficient during the 1950s. Others who refused to cooperate were fired by the studios. WGA was one of several Hollywood unions that failed to support blacklisted members during this dark period of the 1950s. Many of the blacklisted continued to write through "fronts," and it was not until a half-century later that the WGA attempted to make amends by giving credits for projects written by blacklisted writers.
While Hollywood dealt with the implications of life during a Cold War, it also had to contend with the postwar rise of television, much of which at first was broadcast live from New York. The Authors League formed the Television Writers Group, and a group of New York writers formed their own group, Television Writers of America, which was quick to file with the National Labor Relations Board to bargain on behalf of writers. With television shows also being filmed in Hollywood, it was natural that the Screen Writers Guild should also form a television wing. The situation was clearly too unwieldy, and the heads of the various groups began meeting, resulting in a reorganization of the various writers' organizations in 1954. Two new groups emerged, WGAW based in Los Angeles and WGAE based in New York, the Mississippi River serving as a geographic boundary for the affiliated groups. The Authors League retained the Authors Guild and Dramatists Guild, whose members owned their copyrights and leased their material, making them not eligible for protection by the National Labor Relations Act. The Guilds then filed for a new election to represent television writers and after they won certification the Television Writers of America disbanded. At first WGAW maintained two branches, the Screen Branch and TV-Radio Branch. In 1973 they were merged into a single branch.
The increasing popularity of television created a number of new issues for WGAW to negotiate. A strike against the television networks was averted in 1956 when a contract was signed that ran until 1960. The sticking points were separation of rights for writers and nonexclusivity of services. As a result, there was no distinction drawn between writers working on a single television series and those assigned to multiple series, and writers hired on an exclusive basis were guaranteed a minimum amount of work. The deal was in line with what had already been negotiated with the television production units of the major studios and included rerun payments. However, reruns were just the beginning of the ancillary payments from television the Guild would begin to seek for its members. The studios were already leasing or selling movies to satisfy television's appetite for programming but writers were denied a share of these new revenues. Moreover, in the late 1950s WGAW began lobbying for payments for future "pay-TV" profits, whether they came from subscription television or closed-circuit television. The worry at the time was that writers would not share in the revenues of movies shown to paying video audiences, not just on advertised-support television.
The question of movies shown on television was at the heart of a strike that began in January 1960 after WGAW and the studios failed to reach agreement on a new contract. The strike was not settled until June when the studios agreed to pay $600,000 into the Guild's health, pension, and welfare funds as well as 5 percent of income received on pre-1960 films. For post-1960 films writers were to receive 2 percent of television income but no additional payments if the films were shown on pay-television. The Guild was also successful in shifting writer compensation from a residual formula to a royalty system.
Although Guild members were ready to walk out when contract negotiations stalled in both 1963 and 1966, strikes were averted at the last minute in both cases. The 1963 contract merely postponed the question of salary until the next round of negotiations. The television writers received some pay increases in 1966 and the studios agreed to let them return to a residual formula, because, according to the New York Times, "the world market for TV reruns had been 'glutted' and that the increasing use of motion pictures on television had reduced the rerun market in this country." Thus, 4 percent television royalties were traded for fixed residuals.
In 1973 the Guild sought greater wage increases from the major television and movie producers and this time the writers did go on strike in March of that year. The walkout lasted 16
weeks and led to significant increases in payments but far from the amount the Guild had been seeking. For example, a one-hour prime-time television script increased from $4,500 to $6,000, but the Guild had wanted $12,000. Also growing out of the 1973 strike were supplemental market payments and the creation of the WGAW Health Fund. Later in the 1970s the Guild won TV residuals in perpetuity, eliminating the ten-run cap on residual payments to writers.
Longest Strike Settled: 1988
Guild members walked the picket lines once again in April 1981. Areas of contention involved the growing home television market that included cable television as well as video disks and cassettes. A settlement was quickly reached with independent producers, but negotiations with the major studios continued until July when the 13-week strike came to an end after a revenue formula was found for the home video market. The Guild voted to strike again in 1985, but the ranks were not especially committed and the strike ended after just two weeks with the Guild essentially caving in. The 9,000-member WGAW was far more militant three years later, however. A strike lasted one day longer than the 1960 stoppage, stretching from March 7 to August 7, 1988, delaying the start of the next television season and costing the entertainment industry an estimated $500 million. The main point of contention were foreign residual television payments. The new contract provided writers with a chance to earn 1.2 percent of a program's gross foreign earnings after a revenues threshold was met. The writers also won concessions from producers that increased their access to film sets, the right to comment on casting, and a chance to review the director's cut, provisions that did not sit well with the Directors Guild. According to the New York Times, however, the "strike was generally seen as a defeat for the guild, with no major issues resolved."
The 1980s also saw the Guild finding common cause with similar organizations in other English-speaking countries: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. In 1985 they formed the International Affiliation of Writers Guilds to serve the needs of their members who were operating in a world of media consolidation and globalization. Under the terms of the affiliation, a member of one guild who traveled to work in the jurisdiction of another would be automatically transferred to the local guild, which could better protect that member's rights.
The 1990s were a time of relative peace for the WGAW. At the start of the decade WGAW and the Directors Guild tried to mend strained relationships between their memberships, drawing up a "creative rights understanding." The suggested practices included the two unions refraining "from making collective bargaining proposals in the creative rights area that contravene the other's agreements or interfere with the authority of the writer or director in the creative process." In addition, the Guilds agreed to share collective bargaining proposals before presenting them to the producers. The 1990s also saw the WGAW taking steps to exorcize the ghost of the 1950s' communist witch hunt era, awarding writing credits to members of the Hollywood Ten and other blacklisted writers. The decade also brought satellite television and expanding cable television systems as well as the emergence of the Internet, which opened up new ways to distribute and profit from film entertainment content.
Hollywood was poised for a WGAW strike in 2001, residuals serving again as the bone of contention, this time related to reruns on cable TV or works sold in video and overseas markets. The old contract expired but a strike was averted when an agreement was reached three days later. When that contract expired three years later in 2004 the Guild again avoided a walkout, but it did not win increases in residual payments, setting the stage for a showdown in 2007 when the latest contract expired on October 31. Most of the 26 demands of WGAW and WGAE centered on increased residuals for writers on content that was distributed digitally, via computers and mobile devices. A federal mediator was brought into the talks, but the two sides were unable to reach an agreement and in the early morning hours of November 5, 2007, the members of WGAW and WGAE launched the first industry-wide strike in nearly 20 years.
Principal Subsidiaries
The Writers Guild Foundation.
Further Reading
Albiniak, Paige, "Silver Lining in WGA Strike?" Broadcasting & Cable, October 29, 2007, p. 11.
Bart, Peter, "Accord on Coast Averts TV Strike," New York Times, June 16, 1966.
Cieply, Michael, "Screenwriters Begin Strike As Negotiations Continue," New York Times, November 5, 2007, p. A20.
Harmetz, Aljean, "Movie and TV Writers, Rejecting 'Final' Offer, Take to Picket Lines," New York Times, March 8, 1988, p. C13.
------, "Writers Ratify Contract, Ending Longest Strike," New York Times, August 8, 1988, p. C15.
Kahn, Gordon, Hollywood on Trial, New York: Boni & Gaer, Inc., 1948, 229 p.
Lippman, John, "Writer's Tentative Accord with Studios Sets Tone for Negotiations of Performers," Wall Street Journal, May 7, 2001, p. A2.
"Pact Ratified, Writers Return," New York Times, July 16, 1981, p. C20.
Pryor, Thomas M., "Screen Writers Back New Union," New York Times, May 21, 1954.
Reinhold, Robert, "Screen Writers and Directors Reach Pact," New York Times, January 25, 1990.
Schumach, Murray, "Screen Writers and 7 Studios Settle Strike Begun on Jan. 16," New York Times, June 11, 1960.
Schwartz, Nancy Lynn, The Hollywood Writers' Wars, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1981, 334 p.
"Screen Guild Wins Labor Board Vote," New York Times, August 10, 1938.
Weinraub, Bernard, "The Blacklist Era Won't Fade to Black," New York Times, October 5, 1997, p. 4.
"Writers Guild Strikes Major Producers on Coast," New York Times, March 7, 1973.
— Ed Dinger
