By Lynn SHER

It is a new era of entertainment: the streaming era. Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu and others provide an inordinate amount of shows from which to choose: award-winning shows, shows with writing so perfect that A-list actors are cast who then turn unknown actors into household names, and shows and movies with production value as good as any summer blockbuster film.

At the root of this entertainment mecca is the writers from whom these worlds materialize. Because of these scripts, directors, actors, set designers, show runners and costume designers are among those hired by entertainment providers. But at the foundation are the scriptwriters – and many don’t think they are being paid what they’re worth.

Nick Bernardone is a primetime Emmy Award and Writers Guild of America-nominated writer who won the Producers Guild of America Award for Outstanding Digital Series for “30 Rock: the Webisodes” in 2008.

“I’m very grateful for having worked on two strong series over the past seven years,” he said adding that he regretfully feels “the strain of being a free agent for the first time in the current climate” since his last show ended in 2022.

“There are very few jobs. The [writers’] rooms are tiny and [the jobs] are often only a few weeks long,” he said. “Landing a job on a show used to mean security – that you could offset some of the bad times with the good. Those days are sadly over in the current model.”

Dave Metzger wrote for “The Blacklist” and “CSI: Vegas.” He shared his experience via Twitter that he’d get viable work, work that should have moved him up the employment ladder. Inevitably he’d find himself unemployed, having to take side gigs in retail or food delivery. If work came it would usually be something he was overqualified for. He eventually became inundated with debt and eventually lost his membership in the Guild because he couldn’t afford to make the payments. Luckily, work came through for him and he was able to rejoin the WGA. He voted “Yes” for the possible strike.

Contract negotiations for the WGA occur every three years. This is when WGA East and WGA West negotiate a collective bargaining agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), “the entertainment industry’s official collective bargaining representative,” according to its website. The WGA’s current Minimum Basic Agreement is effective from May 2, 2020 through May 1, 2023. WGA East explained, “The Minimum Basic Agreement (MBA) is the collective bargaining agreement that covers the benefits, rights and protections for most of the work done by WGA members.”

The problem, according to the WGA, is “with the rising dominance of streaming – where half of series writers now work – short orders (the shows that have about six-10 episodes a year rather than the traditional 24), the separation of writing and production, and the lack of a season calendar have depressed writer pay.”

In the 2013-14 season, 33% of all TV series writers were working at minimum. Today, it’s nearly 50% of all writers. The Guild bases the minimum the writer can be paid on the type of production and the size of the budget of the production. Using this calculation pretty much determines the least amount that the writers have to be paid contractually.

And it’s not just television writers who are affected. Feature and comedy/variety writers are suffering under the current contract. In the March WGA article “Writers Are Not Keeping Up” (https://tinyurl.com/5n6ddz9k) it concludes, “The companies have leveraged the streaming transition to underpay writers, creating more precarious, lower-paid models for writers’ work.”

Because of this, big production companies like Disney and Netflix continue to grow richer, while writers earn less.

Standing firm with the WGA are the Teamsters Local 399, which represents workers in the Motion Picture Industry.

Lindsay Dougherty of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters stated via Twitter, “No one should feel sorry for employers … We stand with the WGA in pursuit of a strong and fair contract. Should the employers be unable to address the writers concerns, & they do go on strike, Teamsters will continue to be in solidarity.”

Also in support of the potential strike is SAG (Screen Actor’s Guild), the DGA (Director’s Guild of America), Deutscher Drehbuchverband (Screenwriters Guild of Germany) and The Writers Guild of Great Britain (WGGB), which has encouraged its members to join in support by not accepting WGA work if the strike happens.

“In its current form, the days of being rewarded for working on a hit show are behind us,” said Bernardone. “Things need to change and in a big way. I don’t think anybody wants a strike, but with the way the industry has been bracing, we might as well already be in one. It’s time to enact real fundamental change to the industry. And 97.9% of my fellow Guild members appear to agree.”