Re: The strike is on
Actually, for police, it would be more like "I get benefits if I get shot by a regular bullet, but not a hollow point" That's the problem, and that would be a serious problem for the police officers and their families specially in high risk areas.
That's exactly it, I think.
Also, Mole, the fault in your line of thinking is that everyone accepts the contracted deal they're offered because they think it's fair. It's not true. You take the contract because it's the only job available.
If you want to work in Hollywood as a writer, you are given the same contract they've been giving for years, and if you say no, you get no job and you're out on your ear. Sometimes you might be able to actually alter the contract through wheeling and dealing, but only in certain situations which are generally, not the norm. So you take the job and hope to get better benefits as your star rises.
Essentially - it's career promotion. You take a job at a low level, work at it, and hope for promotion later to more pay.
Striking, which is essentially not working to force the employers' profit-machine to shut down and stop earning, is generally a last-resort measure used to gain rights that are being denied - not to just get more money (though the two seem to go hand in hand).
In this case, the last time the WGA striked was in '88 which was 20 years ago and this strike is about new technology. When you consider the change in technology over those 20 years, it's no surprise this would come up.
The strike, in this case, isn't about getting a promotion they think they deserve, rather, it's that they should keep the same wage for the same job.
Writers have a system in place for how much money they earn on residuals and what not on videos, films, etc. But when those contracts were made, DVDs did not exist. So now that they do, studio executives are claiming that writers shouldn't get the
exact same monetary compensation for DVDs that they've had for video.
Basically, someone went Ctrl+H and replaced "VHS" with "DVD" and they studio executives claimed they don't owe the writers any money.
This is what Random was saying - imagine if a policeman got shot, but received no compensation because he was hit by a hollow point bullet and his contract, which was made in 1901 doesn't give compensation to hollow points because they
didn't exist.
I agree - striking is a sucky method with which to try and resolve these disputes; but honestly imagine you were a writer in this situation. You wrote MOLE'S WONDER PARK, a huge bestseller in the 15-25 year-old male audience. And you've been getting your residuals off it for 20 years. But now, no money is coming to you, yet the movie just came out in a new 3-disc DVD box set. You ask why you're not getting money and someone says, "Oh, your contract only stipulates video" and you realise your contract was made in 1981 and predates DVD by more than 10 years. It's a case of letter of the law defeating the spirit of the law - and what options do you have? No legal recourse, only a moral one. At the moment, that's striking, but honestly, if you can think of a better way to do it (and there should be one) best tell the WGA because I bet ****loads of people making TV still want to work.
Or something. I honestly am so burned out right now, I'm not sure I made any sense or am even accurate. What the hell "submit reply"
