This should be titled, “Mediation Won’t Work…So Let’s Try Fear”…
Members of the Western arm of the WGA whose unproduced scripts were shopped or bought by a Studio now have until tomorrow [Friday] to give those scripts to the Union for their ‘Script Validation’ program. This is an attempt to keep track of possible rogue writers, and trace any work that might break the strike.
As one might expect, the AMPTP is handling this news with all the restrained dignity of a grenade with the pin missing…In short, they’re having a super-annuated cow!
Their response so far has been a positive blizzard of ‘Cease and Desist” orders, trying to get the scripts into their ‘safe keeping.’ The Union has used the validation program before to ensure the members don’t do scab work for Studios, but there’s little they can do to force a Writer to comply.
The WGA-West required its members to file all unused scripts within four days of the strike starting. The WGA”s eastern office is requiring the same thing, but they haven’t set a deadline yet.
The AMPTP’s reps fired off some very terse letters, demanding an immediate cease and desist on the script-validation program. The WGA are planning to ignore the demands. So the AMPTP sent doom-laden letters direct to WGA members, threatening everything short of eternal damnation if scripts written under contract were not immediately surrendered to them. The Guild promptly filed a complaint about this intimidation with the Labor Relations Board, and it was stopped. But what will take its place is a very good question.
Hundreds of scripts have already been delivered to the WGA’s offices. The results of this ‘defiance’ have yet to appear, but you can bet the AMPTP are already employing every available grain of guile and cunning to sink the strike so no-one but them gets a decent, living wage.
In 2006, an average Writer earned $200-300k. Leslie Moonves [the boss of CBS] earned $28 million. You do the math!
