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Paul Haggis is a WGA activist who also opines/writes frequently about Guild issues.
A Message from Paul Haggis
Fellow Writers,
I hate long statements of support, so this ain’t gonna be one of those. I just truly believe that Elias and his team are our best option at this juncture. They were a big part of pulling us through what could have been a disastrous strike. Did we make all the gains we wanted? No. But they walked a razor’s edge and brought us back a pretty good deal, when some of the louder voices on the studio side were being completely intransigent and insisting on major rollbacks. Should we have weaved left at times instead of right, or vice versa? Of course. But I’ve walked the sidewalks a few times in my thirty years in the Guild, and I have seen too many negotiations botched by hot-head radicals or please-don’t-hurt-me capitulators. I was really impressed with how this group held us together and got us what we needed, if not what we wanted. Are the other folks who are running against them terrific people too? Absolutely, and many of them are friends, colleagues, and all people that I really respect. But my money is on Elias and his team. I ask you kindly to look at their record and consider giving them your support.
Sincerely,
Paul Haggis
Editor-in-Chief Nikki Finke - tip her here.
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You were impressed with how our strike leaders “got us what we needed”?
Wow.
But at least Elias has his bumoer sticker now: “Vote Davis–He Got Us What We Needed”.
Wow.
The Elias Group is our ONLY Option.
Geez, wake up. AMPTP is trying to use the same playbook on us that they used with SAG.
Wells = Corporate Plant.
Wow–Not only are you an unimaginative writer, StickingWithMyUnion, you are just plain juvenile in your comments following these endorsements. I hope more mature thinking people prevail in this election. BTW, you ought to change your signature to StickingItToMyUnion, since your comments are unconstructive as well.
StickingWithMyUnion,
“You can’t always get what you want… but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you NEED.”
– Mick Jagger and Keith Richards
Do I really have to explain that quote to you?
Paul, your brevity is always appreciated, but in the future please refrain from using “ain’t” and “folks” in political missives. We all know who you are, so cheaply calculated common-folk phrasing only delegitimizes you further…on the other hand, I did enjoy the early morning chortle.
Hailey C.–
Thanks for your vituperation and ad hominem attacks. I was addressing myself to union matters; you responded by evaluating the quality of my writing and my imagination. Projecting a bit? Feeling a tad insecure, Hailey C? Career not everything you hoped?
The best line ever about the WGA was by Raymond Chandler re: a potential strike, “it’s the revolt of the assholes”.
My money’s on the one who’s proven he can bring about substantial gains in the industry and actually strenghten our guild, and not on the one who’s already helped lead us into one of the most disasterous strikes in recent memory… and is preparing to do it again.
I fully agree with Paul’s statement, and I would also like to ask, re: a couple of other statements in this string — why is “organizing” the guild being portrayed as a negative by the Wells faction during this campaign? Objecting to a drive to create a unified, informed membership strikes me as odd, to say the least. This whole “money spent on organizing” argument is a red herring. Whether or not you agreed with the previous leadership, you had a voice and ample opportunity to speak up. As I recall, the strike was approved by an overwhelming number of WGA members. If you had an opinion different from the leadership and didn’t win your case for it, the reason wasn’t leadership indifference, it was that the majority approved of the way the union was being run.
Now to “what we need” — our negotiating committee gained as much ground as they could against massive corporate interests. That’s what “getting what we needed” means. It happened because the union was the real deal — a union. Fragmentation at the end of the strike didn’t happen because WGA leaders weren’t trying to negotiate — they were stone walled, and some of the richer members of the union got sick of waiting. Whether this led to right or wrong action is for the voters to decide. Along with many others who watched the progress of the strike as captains, I support Elias Davis and his team.
Well, since haggis is probably going to read this, just want to say that million dollar baby was an awesome script. Awesome read.
Marjorie David:
I think you’re misinterpreting the use of the word ‘organizing.’ The Wells/Gould/Keyser ticket isn’t objecting to the money spent on communications within the guild, and well, organizing the strike– they’re objecting to the funds spent in ‘organizing’ as it’s defined in labor union jargon– trying to unionize non-union shops- reality shows, etc.
@ Marjorie: You are confusing internal organizing (rallying the troops) with external organizing (trying to bring in reality show writers and other currently non-unionized writers… and in some cases, editors)
The former isn’t controversial to anyone. The latter is. That’s the organizing we’ve spent a ton of money on to little effect.
and… the WGA-pressured-to-fold-by-rich-members-thing is demonstrably false. An urban myth propagated by true believers.
Simply ask Patric Verrone point black if this is true.
… or point “blank.”
I think it’s funny how people blame the lack of writing jobs right now on last year’s strike and not this year’s recession.
But there is a major myth that keeps cropping up and needs to be debunked. The myth is this:
That we in the WGA basically got the DGA deal. Anyone who really knows the ins and outs of what happened in this strike should know that this is not even close to the truth. In very basic terms, our deal made the internet a union place and the DGA deal did not.
I’ll explain:
If you asked most people at the beginning of this strike what we were fighting for, they’d tell you it was the internet, the future.
Did you know that in the DGA deal there was no coverage for new productions made for the internet under a certain budge threshold? And that basically every production that had been made for the internet up until that time was under that budget threshold? It’s true. That means that the DGA deal was basically offering the studios a non union internet space in which to develop new content.
What the WGA deal added when we held out for a few more weeks (over the objections of John Wells) was a provision that said ANY internet content will be union if it employs a professional writer at any time in the process (and will be so retroactively). This basically makes the internet a union place for writers.
Isn’t that what the whole damn strike was about?
Maybe this gets missed because it’s just one little detail, but it’s a huge difference in the two deals.
And yes, we can argue about whether or not the final deal we got was good enough, or could have been better, but we can’t forget the fact that we started the strike with rollbacks on the table and ended up with guild covered internet. Something that the DGA and John Wells did not get us.
I don’t know why this isn’t been talked about more. The myth that we got the DGA deal needs to be put to rest.
Lastly, before someone says that the same provision making internet productions union is in the DGA deal, they should know that it WASN’T in their deal until AFTER we gained it in OUR deal.
And for those of you who don’t know, it wasn’t until we started negotiating our deal with the studios that we found out that the DGA “deal” wasn’t a deal at all – they hadn’t actually negotiated any of the points. They had agreed to a press release.
I wish the obvious, pragmatic choice for president wasn’t an accused plagiarizer, because honestly, it would make things so much easier. It’s hard to ignore the accusation, unresolved as it is, even with the other arguments of experience. It’s hard to get around publicly unresolved accusations of plagiarism when you’re voting for the leader of a union of writers.
Hard to get around it.
Aaaaah, lovely-lovely politics.
To Marjorie David,
Like you, I have no problem is using my real name. I wish more people would. Anway, Marjorie, you hit the nail on the head. Sadly, you weren’t looking at what you were hammering. “The richer members were tired of waiting”. That says it all… because it happens every time. I have been through five strikes now as an actor and writer. Each one a more miserable failure than the previous one. Why? Because we’re not really a union. In all these show biz, above-the-line guilds, a minority of the membership makes a huge majority of the money. And on average, they do so in a relatively short period of time. The strike in ’88 ended the same way. It might be different if we were all paid $15.75 an hour but we’re not. Some of us make millions, most of us are at best, on the hunt. The studios know this.
Anyone who says this last strike was a success is too wrapped up in emotion, to have any real busines sense at all. We were promised a raise in dvd’s. The number one example of how we are being ripped off (and we are) was the pie chart showing us getting 15 cents for every dvd sold. Something that could actually have an impact over the next three years, the length of this contract. We were told, “We’re going to get you 30 cents.” We got nothing. Even using that example… I just got a dvd residual for a show I co-created for FX. It was something like $7.42. I should strike for another $7.42?! I lose four episodes of “My Name Is Earl” worth a lot of money, and the shows ratings were never quite the same. After year four, we get cancelled. Five of those 16 writers didn’t get staffed this season. And this same scenario happened to how many other shows? Why? Because they up the episode order for “Biggest Loser”. How many examples are there of that?!
Or the “sell-through” gains. Really? I went on strike to get like $75.00 for an episode of “My Name Is Earl”. That’s something to strike for?
Here’s another popular gem… “The corporations offered roll-backs.” THEY ALWAYS OFFER ROLL-BACKS!!!! They’re corporations. That’s what they do. But that doesn’t mean there are actually going to be roll-backs! And if there were, that strike would have lasted two years without any fragmentation because that is something actually worth striking for!!!
I am voting for John Wells. A new tact must be had. The “macho” thing failed. We MUST find a way to negotiate with the DGA. The same way SAG must find a way with AFTRA.
Tim Stack
Who’s going to better control the Jonathan Prince contingent of self-interested, ready-to-scab bums is the real question in this election. At least Davis et al. have shown a willingness to shame them…
First, thanks to those who correctly pointed out my misunderstanding of the “organizing” argument. Sorry about that. Oddly, I didn’t even think that there would be an issue with bringing other groups into the union.
The stronger your membership, the stronger your bargaining position — and as someone who knows people working in reality, I can tell you that they do a huge amount of writing, in some cases down to writing plots for production people to go out and “find” among the “characters.”
If you think that doing producing and editing work on a show disqualifies a person from writers guild membership, you might wonder what all of us writer/producers are doing here. I know EP’s who don’t even write — they supervise, shape and manage the show in many capacities — should they leave the writers guild because they’re functioning as story tellers in the larger sense and not exclusively generating scripts? Maybe you think so. If you do, you’re between a rock and a hard place, because John Wells does a lot of non-script-writing story telling, and Elias Davis believes in bringing other categories of story-tellers into the union. Hmmm.
This is a real election with real issues. As far as using real names goes — why not? I, personally, ignore abusive posts that spew venom and change nothing.
Paul, thank you for revitalizing the Bond franchise. Loved Crash also.
yetanotherwriter –
Someone has misinformed you.
The WGA’s deal includes the same low-budget non-union exception on original new media programs as the DGA’s deal.
Both the DGA and the WGA have the same jurisdiction over derivative new media programs produced by a Signatory Company.
However, neither prohibits a Signatory Company from contracting a non-signatory to produce a derivative new media program.
When that happens, the WGA’s deal offers no protections for the writer.
Whereas, the DGA’s deal requires that even where a derivative new media program is produced by a non-signatory, the UPM and AD are still entitled to union pay. In this way, the DGA got a de facto industry standards agreement for their below-the-line members.
Additionally, under the DGA’s deal: if a director contracted to direct an episode of the tv series is also contracted to direct a derivative new media program, then the director, UPM and AD are all covered — which eliminates the “contract to a non-signatory” loophole entirely.
Apparently, it did not occur to the WGA to even ask for the equivalent of this, so that if a writer employed on a tv series is contracted to write a derivative new media production, the production must be covered.
So the DGA and the WGA have the same jurisdiction over original new media production, but on derivative new media productions, the DGA has better protections for all its members, and protects its below-the-line members in all cases.
And, of course: the WGA’s derivative new media terms offer zero protection for the writers who are creators of the tv series from which the new media production is derived.
As far as making the internet a union place, the DGA did a better job on behalf of DGA members than the WGA did on behalf of WGA members.
Just because someone tells you something you want to believe, it doesn’t mean its true. Trust, but verify.
All of the above can be verified by anyone. Both Guilds’ New Media Sideletters are available online.
Marjorie David-
Well, I don’t think anyone questions the usefulness of organizing as a goal, but there are real questions (as there are in any union) about the best tactics with which to do it, and how much of a budget to use for it.
There are also different types of organizing. For instance, it would probably be easier to try to organize reality shows, etc. the way that the WGA organized the our newswriter members. Which has the disadvantage of not increasing our strike clout (since they don’t strike with us) but would have the advantages of 1) being easier to do, and 2) actually making the lives of the people who work on those shows better, by getting them minimum wages and access to the health/pension fund and 3) increasing our dues base.
Patric Verrone and David Young have chosen the first strategy over the second. (I assume Davis agrees with them on this.) It’s a legitimate strategy, but I think it has failed and will continue to fail. (In fact, if you recall, when WU ran to begin with, organizing reality shows to increase our strike clout was an explicit part of their campaign. A lot of money was spent, and very few shows were unionized, and I don’t think our strike clout was increased.)
Meanwhile I think if we had gone with the other strategy, organizing reality shows (etc.) a la the newswriters– well, our strike clout would have also not increased. But we would have spent less money, and a lot of peoples’ lives would be better because they’d have health insurance and union scale wages.
And I know of at least one reality show whose story editors came to David Young in 2007 asking for WGA support for their organizing campaign under that kind of deal, and Young turned them down– because, he said, if were organized under something like the newswriters contract, and couldn’t strike with us, the WGA wasn’t interested in organizing them.
Anyway, this is a pretty complicated issue and beyond the scope of a blog comment, but I’d encourage you to ask both sides about the issue at the Q&A breakfasts and dinners this week or at Candiates’ Night on Sept 2.
wasn’t john wells the wga president when the tv landscape changed, became reality show/game show/cable driven, and the wga did nothing to get those types of shows covered by the guild?
cause that kinda seems like a big mistake.
It doesn’t matter what side you were on — the strike was an utter failure. Ted Elliot is 100% correct about the nature of the Internet deal — which basically amounted to bupkus. The WGA now operates at a deficit — a direct result of the strike, not of the recession. WU spent too much money on organizing with too little result — and what results there were are only for the benefit of another strike, not the benefit of actual working writers.
The WU loves to blather on and on about the guild being unified, how wonderful it felt to be marching around with your brothers, etc. That’s great, especially if you aren’t working. But if you are a working writer, or plan to be one in the next year, and aren’t planning on voting for Wells, YOU ARE OUT OF YOUR GOURD.
The strike was the worst thing to happen to working writers. Way worse than this recession.
The bottom line is this:
The WU ticket does not understand the business. They made our already damaged relationship with the DGA worse. They did not follow their own strategy during the negotiations. They’ve wasted time and money and hurt the reputation of the WGA by trying to organize reality “writers” (a tactic that has brought the guild absolutely no gains or leverage whatsoever). They have have been ineffective at enforcing residuals; especially residuals in new media.
It’s really a no-brainer.
Elect the slate that led us into a strike without having the strategy or skill-set to engage the studios with … or elect the slate that knows what it’s doing.