The sixth-grade drama club at West Nowhere Middle School cannot change one word of Hapgood (for example) without Tom Stoppard’s permission, but as best I can tell, just about anyone at all can change just about anything at all in a screenplay — names, lines, business, whole scenes, whole acts, the entire story — fish, chips, the lot.

It’s a different business, and the only thing the writers typically get out of it is: paid.

Those that get paid.

(Median WGA income: $5,000. Median Los Angeles home price? God only knows, half a million? $700K?)

No, I’m not a WGA member. Yes, I knew some.

Cujo359 @ 34

Dee @ 30
Whize with the writers, this certainly isn’t in the same ballpark as the GM strike, or miners’ strikes, or the other things that affect tens or even hundreds of thousands of workers.

Strong unions — of all stripes — are good for all of us. Let’s not pull down some unions by saying some are better than others. The more commonplace and accepted all unions are, the better off we’ll be.

The kind of fuckery the writers are protesting is at its root the same sort of fuckery we rail against every day: mega profits accomplished by accruing everything at the top and shafting everyone else down to the bottom. The principle is absolutely the same…

Very well put, Unions are basically the only option to decent treatment decent wages and good working conditions. Without them you have exactly what we have now in America, as you say.

According to HuffPo, Jon Stewart is paying his writers out of his own pocket for two weeks to keep his show going and to support his writers.

Good for him! And now that internet video has really taken off — isn’t it about time for the writers to get residuals from that (potential) income too?

Oklahoma kiddo @ 95

The real battle is between labor and shareholders.

I disagree. It seems like the shareholders are getting screwed by management almost as badly as the workers. It’s the shareholders who pay the price of the obscene compensation and it is their holdings that get diluted by the issuance of the stock options at absurdly low prices to exercise.

Ah, but the shareholders can do something about the executive compensation, if they so choose.

Oklahoma kiddo @ 95

The real battle is between labor and shareholders.

I disagree. It seems like the shareholders are getting screwed by management almost as badly as the workers. It’s the shareholders who pay the price of the obscene compensation and it is their holdings that get diluted by the issuance of the stock options at absurdly low prices to exercise.

When workers also own shares in the company that has worked quite well…