Thursday, April 07, 2022


WGA East Recommends Change To Its Constitution To “Fully Embrace” All Members & End Its Digital Divide


David Robb
Thu, April 7, 2022,

The WGA East, whose leaders last year talked openly about spinning off their digital news members into a separate union, is now fully embracing them by proposing changes to the guild’s constitution that would ensure “balanced representation” on its governing body for members from its different work sectors.

The guild said that to ensure that all members are represented on its governing body, its Council is unanimously recommending that members approve changes to the constitution that include creating three work sector vice presidents covering members who work in Film/TV/Streaming, Broadcast/Cable/Streaming News, and Online Media.

The constitutional changes will be put to a vote of the members later this spring. In the meantime, the guild says it will be kicking off a campaign, called #NextChapter, to encourage members to approve the changes. The guild also will be holding virtual town hall discussions in April to share more information with members about the proposed changes. Members will receive additional information about the changes by email in the next few days.

“The WGAE Council has spent the last several months working together and with an outside facilitator,” said WGA East president Michael Winship. “I think I speak for everyone involved when I say that it has been a learning process in which everyone exchanged ideas and listened to one another. Now we have united. I’m enthusiastic about the result and the next chapter for this brave union of storytellers.”

An organizing resolution approved by the Council requires the appointment of an organizing committee made up of Council members from all work sectors that will meet regularly to advise and consult with staff about potential organizing targets – and requires an increase in the organizing budget to aggressively grow the guild equitably across all sectors.

“I’m thrilled that our governing body has not only created an agreement to increase and formalize our commitment to organizing but also built a process to collaborate with each other on finding solutions to challenges across all work sectors,” said Sara David, a member of the Council who works in online media. “These changes mark an exciting new chapter of the WGA East where we can negotiate stronger contracts, expand our organizing work, and ensure that every member’s voice is heard.”

“The organizing resolution and constitutional changes, when combined, mark an exciting new chapter for the Guild where members have better representation on Council and we will have aggressive new organizing goals that will benefit everyone,” said Gail Lee, a broadcast member of the Council. “Reaching agreement on these changes wasn’t easy, but I am proud of everyone’s willingness on Council to have the difficult but necessary conversations.”

The guild, which has been aggressively organizing digital newsrooms in recent years, put a pause on that last year amid concerns that news writers and producers were on the verge of becoming a majority of the guild’s membership.

WGA East Considers Spinning Off Digital News Members Into New Union Amid “Existential Threat”

Those concerns played out last summer during the guild’s officer and Council elections, with secretary-treasurer-elect Chris Kyle, running unopposed, warning that the influx of digital news writers and producers posed “an existential threat to the guild” that could lead to it “collapsing.”

Only a few years ago, the vast majority of the guild’s members were film and scripted television writers. But over the past six years, the campaign to organize dozens of digital news outlets like Salon, Slate and HuffPost began to change the union’s demographics so dramatically that its broadcast and digital news members were on the verge of becoming a majority of the guild’s membership.

During last year’s elections, which amounted to a referendum on the future of the guild, Winship, who was also running unopposed, told Deadline that the organizing of digital media had “triggered a flow” of so many new members “that we needed to stop for a while – just pause for a while – and access where we are.”

The guild’s opposition Solidarity slate, however, dominated the contested Council races, campaigning on the belief that “it’s important that we continue to organize the entire industry.”


WGA East Council Votes Unanimously To Resume Organizing Digital Newsrooms

The two sides mended their fences in February when the Council voted unanimously to resume organizing digital newsrooms. In a statement, the guild said: “As the media industry continues to unionize across sectors, the WGAE Council is deliberating how to address changes in the make-up of the Guild’s membership and how to ensure that the union can meet the needs of all members – in digital and broadcast news, podcasts, scripted and nonfiction television, feature films, and public broadcasting.”




WGA East Council Finalizes Proposal to Restructure Digital Media Unionization Efforts

Jeremy Fuster
Thu, 7 April 2022

After several months of meetings, the leadership of the Writers Guild of America East have settled on proposed changes to the constitution that will change how the guild develops its plans to unionize digital media companies.

The guild’s leadership announced Thursday that it will start a campaign called “#NextChapter” that will include online meetings with members about the proposed constitutional amendments, on which the WGAE Council unanimously recommended a “yes” vote ahead of a referendum later this spring.

Though WGA East was light on details about the proposed changes, the guild said that the constitution changes, if approved, would create three new vice president positions for each of the work sectors covered by WGA East: Film/TV/Streaming, Broadcast/Cable/Streaming News, and Online Media.

The Council is also proposing a resolution that would provide a budget increase for the guild’s organizing efforts and establish an organizing committee made up of Council members from all three work sectors that will advise and consult with staff about potential organizing targets. This would be done to “ensure that members from all work sectors are represented on the union’s governing body.”

WGA East President Michael Winship hailed the proposal as one that addresses the concerns of both digital media members of WGA East and film/TV writers whose work the union was originally founded to protect. Since 2015, WGA East has been heavily involved in organizing digital media outlets like Gizmodo and Vice and have been a source of stability for writers during a time of mass media layoffs.

However, Winship and other leaders and members within WGA East from the film/TV branch voiced concerns that such writers would soon be outnumbered within the guild and that not enough was being done to ensure that such members had an influential voice in contract and organizing issues that impacted their section of the industry. The debate over the future of WGAE’s organizing was at the core of last September’s council elections, which saw the legacy wing led by Winship take top positions unopposed while 7 of 11 open council seats were taken by digital media organizing supporters.

“The WGAE Council has spent the last several months working together and with an outside facilitator. I think I speak for everyone involved when I say that it has been a learning process in which everyone exchanged ideas and listened to one another,” said Winship said in a statement. “Now we have united. I’m enthusiastic about the result and the next chapter for this brave union of storytellers.”

“I’m thrilled that our governing body has not only created an agreement to increase and formalize our commitment to organizing but also built a process to collaborate with each other on finding solutions to challenges across all work sectors,” said Sara David, a WGAE council member and editor on Netflix’s editorial team. “These changes mark an exciting new chapter of the WGA East where we can negotiate stronger contracts, expand our organizing work, and ensure that every member’s voice is heard.”

As the referendum vote nears, digital media organizing has pushed forward after the WGAE Council unanimously agreed to do so in a vote this past February. Headlining the guild’s organizing work was a six-day strike at Gizmodo Media last month that ended with a bargaining agreement with several major wage and working condition improvements for the media site’s workers.

WGA East Leaders Strike Compromise on Membership Battle, Will Pursue Changes to Union Structure

Cynthia Littleton - 
Thu, 7 April 2022, 
Variety

Leaders of the WGA East have reached a compromise after months of friction over the membership base of the union that represents film and TV writers on the East Coast.

The WGA East council voted unanimously to pursue major changes to the union’s constitution to allow for different classifications of membership. The council is recommending changes that will be voted on in a member referendum later this spring.
More from Variety

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All of this is an effort to settle the divide over the WGA East’s big push during the last decade to organize writers for digital news and entertainment outlets.

“The WGAE Council has spent the last several months working together and with an outside facilitator. I think I speak for everyone involved when I say that it has been a learning process in which everyone exchanged ideas and listened to one another,” said Michael Winship, president of the Writers Guild of America East. “Now we have united. I’m enthusiastic about the result and the next chapter for this brave union of storytellers.”

The guild’s plan is to create three “work sectors” for WGA East membership: Film/TV/Streaming, Broadcast/Cable/Streaming News and Online Media. Under the proposed constitutional changes, all members would vote for the President and Secretary-Treasurer officer posts. The guild will create three new VP council posts — one for each sector — and voting for those slots will be limited by membership sector. Guild members would also only vote WGA East contracts or strike authorization votes that affect their sector.

“We’re very happy. The community was able to come together and reach an agreement that protects everyone’s rights and everyone’s contracts and everyone’s negotiations,” Winship told Variety after the vote.

Longtime WGA East members who work in traditional entertainment and scripted TV and film have gradually raised concerns about the influx of members who typically make far less that successful screenwriters and showrunners. The income differential has some members worried that the union’s health and pension funds will be diluted.

But the even bigger concerns among film and TV writers was the fast rate of growth for the ranks of digital writers at a rate that would quickly outpace the ranks of the union’s traditional core narrative screenwriters — which would be a big departure from the WGA East’s roots. Among the old guard, there were worries that some members would be inclined to shift membership to the WGA West, where the vast majority of members work in traditional TV and film.

The schism was laid bare last fall during the WGA East election for officers and board members when two clear factions emerged. The slate of candidates that ran under the Solidarity banner reflected the desire to keep broadening the WGA East tent with digital writers. Candidates that ran on the Inclusion and Experience ticket, which included Winship, called for a moratorium on WGA East organizing of digital outlets while the issues were vetted by union leaders.

Over the past few months, sources said Winship has led the effort to bridge the gap with the goal of keeping the union from breaking up or bifurcating along more permanent lines.

“I’m thrilled that our governing body has not only created an agreement to increase and formalize our commitment to organizing but also built a process to collaborate with each other on finding solutions to challenges across all work sectors,” said Sara David, a member of the Council who works in online media. “These changes mark an exciting new chapter of the WGA East where we can negotiate stronger contracts, expand our organizing work, and ensure that every member’s voice is heard.”

David Simon, a veteran showrunner and council member who ran on the Inclusion and Experience slate, said the issue at hand came down to a problem of governance. The WGA East needed to find a way to make room for new members working in different sectors while still protecting the interests of the members that the union was founded to represent. At present the WGA East has about 6,500 members.

“What it came down to was: How do we protect the existing union and its intention and allow the digital side to continue to organize,” Simon told Variety. “None of us wanted to stop that process or throw them out of the union.”

But without the changes now recommended by WGA East leaders, the union’s board membership and representation on negotiating committees could eventually be dominated by writers from other sectors. That would be a big disadvantage when it comes to bringing leverage to the table with Hollywood’s major employers, in the view of Simon and many others.

“At that point, somebody in the West who calls us to talk about a contract might be talking to somebody who works for Vice or for Hearst,” Simon said. “That’s a different kind of writing job.”

Sources close to the situation said the discussions picked up steam after the first of the year. Council members broke up into working groups to tacke the nitty-gritty issues that require changes to the union’s constitution. Numerous scenarios for restructuring the union were considered, including the prospect of the digital members to create their own local.

Ultimately, it was determined that creating a separate local was too big of a lift for new members that don’t have as much experience with union governance and contract negotiations.

Winship credited the contributions of two outside labor law experts — Susan Davis, of Cohen Weiss and Simon, and Rutgers professor Susan Schurman — for helping to bring objective perspective that helped guide discussions. He also cited the work of WGA East vice president Lisa Takeuchi Cullen and Secretary-Treasurer Christopher Kyle.

“They shouldered so much by helping us hammer out language and being able to reach compromise when necessary,” Winship said.

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