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The WGA and AMPTP recently reached an agreement after a months-long strike concerning the working conditions, rights, and payment of creators. The strike was fueled by writers’ frustration about not receiving residual payments for previous work.
By Max Rhoads ʼ25
Staff Writer
In a critical new development, the Writer’s Guild Association reached a tentative agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, putting an end to the 148-day strike. While this is good news, the fight is far from over. The Screen Actors Guild’s labor union is still on strike, and writers have yet to see whether or not AMPTP will honor this new agreement.
According to The Washington Post, the strike ignited over the matter of residuals. Writers were not receiving payments from the scripts they had written while entertainment executives continued to profit from their work. To stay afloat, writers often had to find work immediately after a project was completed. Another aspect of the strike concerned the use of artificial intelligence, as executives threatened to use AI to replace the work of actors and writers.
The terms of the new agreement include minimum staffing requirements, higher script fees, higher weekly minimums and increased streaming residuals. Over the past decade, streaming services have become the primary mode of visual media consumption. The WGA has made great progress, but with the current streaming model, we should question if these changes will stick and what impact they will have on the entertainment industry.
The existing model of streaming is such that content needs to be produced in mass quantities at rapid rates. In traditional network television, viewers receive a new episode on a weekly basis; with streaming, viewers typically receive the entire season at once. As a result, per The Washington Post, writers for streaming content are treated as interchangeable, forced to go from job to job just to make ends meet.
After the COVID-19 pandemic, many streaming services lost profits, and compensated by implementing cost-cutting measures such as raising prices and laying off writers. Pay for writers remained stagnant in a media space that is increasingly automated and focused on efficient, large-scale production.
According to an article by Trading Economics, inflation in the United States rose at a rate of 3.7% in August 2023, and it is only going to get worse. One of the main demands of the WGA strike was that pay rates should increase as inflation increases.
“The conditions screenwriters were forced to endure before the strike was clear evidence of unchecked corporate greed. ”
The average cost of living in Los Angeles is 51% higher than the national average, with the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment being $2,853 according to a report from FOX-LA.
A report from FOX-LA states that to live comfortably, a single adult would have to make $76,710 after taxes. Most members of the WGA receive inconsistent income from writing scripts and often have to take another job to afford living expenses, exposing a need for inflated pay.
The strike and its ensuing controversy with AMPTP reflect the realities of late-stage capitalism and its effects on the entertainment industry. According to an article by the University of Sydney, late-stage capitalism has a very broad definition. However, it is typically used to refer to the current moment in capitalist countries, where wealth becomes concentrated at the very top.
The conditions screenwriters were forced to endure before the strike was clear evidence of unchecked corporate greed. As this mistreatment continued, writers’ frustrations accumulated more and more, and the strike finally erupted. With this protest, writers planned to disrupt the flow of profit to the studios. Ultimately, they hoped this would motivate the studios to pay them more fairly in response.
The fact that studio executives would have rather replaced writers with AI than pay them more illustrates that they see their workers as machines for churning out content instead of real people. They view screenwriters and chatbots like ChatGPT as interchangeable, regardless of the difference in quality between AI-generated scripts and authentic human work. Even more disturbingly, programs such as ChatGPT receive input from various writing sources, so they can be trained off of another writer’s existing script.
“The fact that studio executives would have rather replaced writers with AI than pay them more illustrates that they see their workers as machines for churning out content instead of real people. They view screenwriters and chatbots like ChatGPT as interchangeable, regardless of the difference in quality between AI-generated scripts and authentic human work. Even more disturbingly, programs such as ChatGPT receive input from various writing sources, so they can be trained off of another writer’s existing script. ”
According to an article by Variety, WGA and AMPTP only came to their three-year agreement on Sept. 24, so time will tell if the studios actually comply with the terms. In addition, there is evidence that streaming sites are taking more cost-cutting measures in response to this decision.
For example, Disney+ has announced that starting in 2024, it will begin rolling out tactics to stop users from sharing passwords, which will force each member of a household to pay for their own subscription. They have also announced plans to raise their subscription cost as of Oct. 12. Companies have already prepared for the potential profit loss and are overcompensating by putting the onus on the consumers.
All in all, the agreement is still very new. Although it is a significant victory, it is important to remember that these companies will almost always value profit over the lives of their workers.