It's hard not to be a conspirian and to read the tortured, half-hearted negotiating as treading water at the table and then doing something to try to turn public opinion. It wasn't about a real negotiation. It was all kabuki, about managing their bad press.
Over on United Hollywood, WGA member Marc Guggenheim posted a pretty clear precie of the first month of negotiating, and the games that are being played by the AMPTP:
On October 31, 2007, the day the WGA’s contract with the studios was set to expire, the AMPTP issued the following statement to the WGA:Remember kids, it's all about the internet -- the "too new" medium where nobody's making any money yet.We’ve been working hard to come up with a package in response to your last proposal. But we keep running up against the DVD issue. The companies believe that movement is possible on other issues, but they cannot make any movement when confronted with your continuing efforts to increase the DVD formula, including the formula for electronic sell-through.The magnitude of that proposal alone is blocking us from making any further progress. We cannot move further as long as that issue remains on the table. In short, the DVD issue is a complete roadblock to any further progress.Read that last sentence again: “[T]he DVD issue is a complete roadblock to further progress.”
A roadblock. Gee, I suppose the WGA should take the DVD issue off the table.
So that’s what it did.
Cut to 29 days later -- when the AMPTP finally got around to making its first economic proposal, which they have entitled the “New Economic Partnership.”
What’s that you say? Hasn’t the AMPTP been negotiating with the WGA since July? Hasn’t the WGA been on strike for 24 days? Haven’t hundred of people lost their jobs? And the AMPTP is just making an economic proposal now?
Yup.
But that’s not the kicker. The kicker is that the NEP was vague (purportedly $130 million dollars for an unspecified term) and incomplete -- it didn’t include a proposal on the critical issue of Electronic Sell Through (downloads, think iTunes). But that’s alright, the AMPTP promised, we’ll get the EST half of the proposal to you on Tuesday.
Maybe the AMPTP tried sending their proposal through telepathy, because the WGA negotiators didn’t receive it. Perhaps they’ll get it on Wednesday.
Nope.
Thursday? Nope.
Friday. Surely, the AMPTP would make its Tuesday proposal then. Unfortunately, by five PM, they hadn’t.
“That’s alright,” one can imagine the WGA negotiators thinking. “Maybe they’re OCD and feel like they should present their Tuesday proposal on a Tuesday or something.”
Nope.
Instead of delivering the Tuesday proposal, or any proposal on Friday, the AMPTP delivered a statement which noted in pertinent part, “Instead of negotiating, the WGA organizers have made unreasonable demands that are roadblocks to real progress.”
Waitasecond.
I thought DVDs were the roadblock. Now you’re telling me there are others? Well, heck, the WGA should take those off the table, too. Just like they did with DVDs. Then maybe we could get on with some real negotiating -- after we've given them 95% of what they want without getting a single concession from them on anything, and having been left at the table after they walked out on us.
Riiiight.
(I left out the last bit of the post, referred to in the title, where Neville Chamberlain was name-checked. Really, guys, the war metaphors aren't helping. You're writers. Can't you find a better trope?)
10 comments:
The studios are planning to wait until the WGA crumbles, the writers start accusing each other and then they just go in and the WGA will take anything the AMPTP puts on the table. Joe Straczynski wrote about this on the newsgroups. Read more on my blog or on JMSNews.
Okay, let's set aside the WWII metaphors and go with something else.
This is a boxing match.
The AMPTP is punching away at the WGA's mid-section, cutting off its air. They are faking with their right and hitting hard with their left.
And while the WGA scores a headshot or two here and there, we're only in round five.
If the WGA is going to win, they need to protect their ribs, and chop into the midsection of the AMPTP - the stockholders - hammering away at THEIR ribs.
'Cause it's a 12 round match and the WGA needs to tire the AMPTP out so it can move in close and land a decisive blow.
So guys, get in and punish those ribs. Back away, dance around the ring a bit and make them chase you.
Tire THEM out.
Make THEM hurt, weaker.
Make THEM question.
Get the word out to the stockholders every chance you get. Let them know this is going to cost them. Talk to every one of the financial journals and let them know you aren't going to stop. Economic impact is your fist...
So punish them ribs.
Dude. Their "logic" lost me back at the part where electronic sell-through was included in the DVD formula. I'm no writer, but I believe the word I'm looking for is "Huh???"
Then I read further, and ah! All becomes clear! Because if downloads -- the heart of what the writers are fighting to be paid for -- are "included" in the DVD formula, then they can claim the DVD formula isn't off the table at all, and hence the "roadblock" is still there. "See? Look? Roadblock! Really! It's all their fault!"
Random observation from the standpoint of the Dreaded Day Job: They sound more like our sneakier debtors every day.
I think he lost me a lot earlier than the Nazis. Kabuki seems to be a competition sport. I'm confused about when incorporating reality writers became part of the current WGA proposal? I thought that was a new addition? This post makes it seem like the WGA has done nothing but sit back and react to the AMPTP proposals, instead of doing some negotiating and deal-tweaking of their own. I don't think that's the case, but if it is, it doesn't speak well to their side, either.
New metaphor:
The AMPTP are the Cylons.
The WGA are the twelve colonies.
'88 was end of the First Cylon War.
This last month has been us sending a man with a briefcase to sit at a table in a secret location and wait for the other side to show up.
Which one of the AMPTP morons is the sexy cyborg chick?
Diane, not that I think that you or anybody else should necessarily be following the negotiations that closely, but the fact is that the WGA did start out with an offer -- and the AMPTP rejected it.
When the talks broke down the first time, the rumors for days before was that the AMPTP was ready to present an offer, but demanded the WGA take DVD off the table first. That happened, no offer came.
The AMPTP's Offer of last week was supposed to be "half" their proposal -- the other half was never presented. The WGA counter offered, including changing to accept the AMPTP's framework of a fixed residual rather than a percentage.
One side is negotiating here, and the other side isn't.
Respectfully, your impression of the WGA's tactics in this is not accurate.
And BTW, the reality thing was always in the initial proposal of the WGA, it just wasn't part of the main issues. The only reason it came up last week was because supposedly the WGA was waiting for the AMPTP to come back on the 'main issues' and they wanted to keep talking in the meantime.
Instead, the response never came, and the AMPTP walked out, trying to play it again as a PR thing where the writers were being unreasonable.
There is definite Kabuki going on here, but it's not from the writer side of the stadium.
Denis is correct when he says that the WGA proposed the items on jurisdiction of reality initially. He is also correct when he says they were rejected.
While I'm not normally adverse to trying something a few times ("if at first you don't succeed..."), at this stage, I think putting those items back on the table without some kind of tweak (I'm assuming they are the same - it's hard to have a half jurisdiction proposal), is not active negotiating either.
It's a clever play to leak a rumour that the AMPTP is going to walk away from the table before tabling old proposals that are considered non-starters; I just think that the WGA may have hurt their position by holding up the talks over matters currently not in the contract.
Most writers believed the strike was over the internet and the future of distribution, now can they be so sure?
But Denis, that's what I'm saying - read my comment again. I said I don't think it's the case that they've done nothing, but that's the impression Marc Guggenheim is leaving. "Oh poor us, we give and we give and we give, and this is the thanks we get." Bullshit. And what kind of buillshit is that to be shovelling, when it makes them seem like piss-poor negotiators? There's so much on the writers side that it shouldn't take that kind of lameness to make a point.
And what is the reality proposal all about? Can the WGA and the AMPTP even decide on that, when IATSE represents some of the people the WGA now wants to claim? Can they sit down and hammer out an agreement now, without the people they're trying to organize? I can't imagine, given the horror many WGA members expressed at the idea of their union organizing reality writers a few years ago, when they failed miserably, that this is an issue they'd vote to live or die on now.
"And what kind of buillshit is that to be shovelling, when it makes them seem like piss-poor negotiators?"
Well, they're playing to an audience -- the American people -- most of whom wouldn't recognize a good negotiator if it bit them in some area where it really hurts and leaves bitemarks that spell out "good negotiator".
Fortunately the writers are better organized and reach the "common people" more easily.
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