Strike! Writers Guild of America West Members Stop Work

By SETH SANDRONSKY

The Writers Guild of America West (WGAW) went on strike May 2. This work stoppage followed weeks of unsuccessful talks between the union and Netflix, Amazon, Apple, Disney, Discovery-Warner, NBC Universal, Paramount and Sony with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), which did not reply to a request for comment.

Why this work stoppage, entering week three at this writing? We turn to the union for film and TV writers.

“The companies’ behavior has created a gig economy inside a union workforce,” according to a WGAW statement, “and their immovable stance in this negotiation has betrayed a commitment to further devaluing the profession of writing. From their refusal to guarantee any level of weekly employment in episodic television, to the creation of a ‘day rate’ in comedy variety, to their stonewalling on free work for screenwriters and on AI (artificial intelligence) for all writers, they have closed the door on their labor force and opened the door to writing as an entirely freelance profession.”

Recall that gigs lack continuity. Gigs are temporary. Workers’ living expenses are not temporary. Thus permanently meeting one’s living expenses on wage-income from gigs is a problem.

Take the issue of AI, technological change that employers such as the firms in the AMPTP control. Owners, historically, use their control of technology to increase profitability via power over labor conditions. That is no conspiracy theory, just the reality of a capitalist society. Call it a lack of economic democracy.

Computerization of production is a current manifestation of this process. It affects the working class across multiple occupations that earn wage-income. What makes the strike of the Writers Guild of America West unique is that its members are highly educated and trained. Yet they are still at-risk of declining wages from AI under the control of their employers.  

Following Karl Marx, Harry Braverman in the mid-20th century, unpacked the whys and wherefores of employer control of workplaces—factories to offices—to lay bare what is at stake and why. His close study of the labor process critically examined the ‘scientific management’ model of employer power over workers popularized by Frederick Winslow Taylor (March 20, 1856 – March 21, 1915). Taylor’s influence was widespread. He influenced capitalist employers and academia, e.g., industrial psychology, along with anti-capitalist figures such as V.I. Lenin, the Russian revolutionary leader.

Braverman was a US industrial worker who expanded the work process debate from a Marxist perspective. His analysis influenced the academic world as well. Braverman’s book “The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century” (1975) unpacked the links under monopoly capitalism (big firms dominating industries) between management control, technology, class, and labor de-skilling. Central to these interrelated processes is management’s drive to separate the conceiving of work from executing it.

Thus, workers follow employment orders versus developing their own through the actual labor process itself. If a worker disapproves, s/he is free to find a different job. That is the scope of workers’ freedom in a capitalist workplace.

In the meantime, the WGAW strike could continue for months. There is a history here. Some 12,000 film and television screenwriters of the Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE), and WGAW went on strike from Nov. 5, 2007, to Feb. 12, 2008.

Seth Sandronsky lives and works in Sacramento. He is a journalist and member of the Pacific Media Workers Guild. Email sethsandronsky@gmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, June 15, 2023

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