CK Kiechel

Jesus Christ

Absurd, they are not even trying to be subtle. Just like put a positive spin on the lipsticked pig they’re making their trade minions push out

The reason we have the benefits & power & the chance of a middle class career that we do is because the WGA fought and sacrificed for all these things. We’re thankful to the past writers who have paved the way, that’s why we’re fighting so hard now. We know we owe it to the future.

The studios are trying to do what they tried to do in 2007 & in 1985 - divide the WGA membership with this straw man argument. But showrunners won't fall for it --because everyone who has been in a writers room knows that a healthy room size isn't featherbedding, it's actually NECESSARY for the work

If we don’t preserve the writers room with room mins, then we won’t really have a guild in 10 years. It will be made up of only showrunners & a few upper level lieutenants & the odd new writer they want to throw a bone to. But we won’t have the power we do now or the health care we have now.

They’ll simultaneously wield threats & dangle treats in front of the showrunners— like the new language in many contracts giving SRs a huge bonus if they write all episodes of a season. They’re doing this bc they know they’ll save money — no residuals, no health/pension, no new writers, no WGA power

If we don’t have a min staff size REQUIRED by contract, then showrunners, esp new ones, won't have the power to dictate room size. the studio will do everything to pressure the showrunner to have fewer writers. If you’re being “difficult” abt wanting more writers, then they just won’t make your show

They’re saying oh we’ll give the showrunner the power to decide how many people they want to staff. But they ALREADY do that. Showrunners are already given an impossible budget & told to "figure it out" -- that’s part of the reason why they are often only able to hire 1-3 other writers.

They can increase our residuals, give us raises, offer staff writers a script fee, let us produce our own episodes - all of that DOESN'T MATTER if there is no writers room or it’s a staff of one or two. They’ve set up min staffing as a straw man argument abt "artistic freedom" for the showrunner

While studios & their cronies are calling the WGA plan to preserve the writers room with a minimum # of writers “unrealistic,” it’s actually the one proposal whose success or failure will actually decide if we even have a guild in the future. Without it, none of the other gains we get will matter.

To clarify what’s happening with the AMPTP leaks, the studios are trying to play up their “generous” offer in the trades so that they can call the WGA stubborn later. But this is a bad offer, half the points are ALREADY what we have in our contracts. Want to specifically address minimum staffing… 1/

Can’t stop thinking about something @kiechel.bsky.social said to me: one of the reasons Silicon Valley is so high on its own “A.I.” supply is it lets them shift blame for their own hateful biases & prejudices to something non-human. Even tho they’re trained on a model of the world reflecting them.

The first time we ran a room we got three writers for a heavily-serialized 43 episode order. Everyone juggled 2 or 3 scripts at a time and we rarely had more than a couple people together to break the next ep. That was TAG, but it’s the WGA’s future if we don’t fight for this

real ones do the sunset gower.

also it is next to the Emerson building which has a very lovely bathroom they kindly let us use