The sorry state of streaming residuals shows why SAG and the WGA are striking.
Did you not get paid hourly or salary for the work? Your compensation package was different. Did you not have a steady job? Did you not know you were going in there next week?
I think the latent question here is - how were expectations and/or contracts for writers any different from hourly workers who have never expected royalties?
The previous comment did most of the work for you. Writers, actors, crew, and generally everyone involved in the entertainment industry does not have a salary gig like office workers. They aren’t working consistently–which has only gotten worse in the streaming era–and thus rely on royalties as part of their total compensation.
So, in summary, they are completely different situations that cannot be directly compared.
I don’t think I’m ignorant of the gig-work nature of these things - I am, by choice, a contractor, but in a different field (engineering services). But my contracts specify that the deliverables are “works for hire” and that the client owns all IP, and I am not entitled to residuals or royalties or any other income from the work I’ve done under such contracts.
I just genuinely don’t know if writers thought that they should be getting more. And if so, why?Because there are plenty of analogous (i.e. IP-generating) jobs that don’t have such arrangements.
There are freelance/gig workers in other industries. Programming has had a massive freelance market for ages. It’s practically unheard of for them to receive royalties, so it seems like you don’t need to rely on royalties.
And writers do have a salary gig in the vast majority of cases. It’s just usually not a long term position. They are hired for the duration of the project, and then need to find something new.
That’s not unique to writers or Hollywood at all. Many people are hired for the duration of a project, including managers, engineers, construction workers and so on. None of them receive royalties.
Did you not get paid hourly or salary for the work?
Writing as a profession gets this too in many scenarios.
Your compensation package was different.
Almost everyone’s is. It’s all based on what you can convince people to pay you and the real winners are the ones who are friends and family of the ownership and/or executives, always.
Did you not have a steady job?
Can good writers not land steady jobs? Of course they can! Have I always had a steady job? Of course not!
Did you not know you were going in there next week?
I have had many roles in IT that you never know when something can or would happen to terminate employment. I’ve had an entire department let go so they could shift the work to another group. I’ve had acquisitions happen where getting a pitiful severance is commonplace (and severance only ever comes when you give up all rights to sue anyone at all ever who worked for said entity giving you said pittance. You’re paid for your SILENCE.) I’ve seen MANY contract roles where a hiring manager on a whim can choose to terminate employment and you’re left holding the bag. As an employee you NEVER know if you’re going in there next week, you just hope that you are. After all, you are an employee at-will. This is most roles as very few have duration contracts overall.
I wish IT workers would unionize and demand better pay - but then outsourcing would be even more prevalent than it is. Show business isn’t known for meritocracy in high paying roles anyway.
Paying people in perpetuity for doing one role for a small period of time is aligned with permanent ownership and dividends of something. Why writers wouldn’t just ask for stock or buy stock with earnings like everybody else is puzzling. There are so many stories about abuse with contract negotiation by people at all levels of showbusiness that i’d argue the whole thing should be overhauled but any disruption causes some to win and some to lose… and we couldn’t have anyone brought down to the same level of anyone else, could we? Let’s just keep those executive pay and bonus structures the same as they’ve always been too while we’re at it, wouldn’t want to stop their meteoric rise in wage y/y while the rest of us get boned.
