Thread by @AmyLikesToWrite

HI ALL! I was busy all morning but now I’ve got TIME so buckle up and settle in for a #IALivingWage #IASolidarity mega thread. Grab some popcorn and crack your fave La Croix, because I’ve been on the ground in the Local 871 negotiations committee and I’ve got A LOT to talk about.

The support and solidarity I’ve found in the committee, throughout our local, and from our IATSE brothers and sisters at large has been remarkably empowering and encouraging, so much so that I volunteered to speak publicly to the AMPTP regarding our #IALivingWage initiative.

What follows is that statement, slightly abridged. I fear it mostly fell on deaf ears, so I wanted to share it here. If nothing else I hope it shows anyone struggling to make it in Hollywood that you are not alone and that we are fighting hard to make things better for all of us!

(If you’re short on time please skip to the end for some ACTION ITEMS, because all of this is pointless if it only lives on twitter.)

All right, here we goooooooo:

My name is Amy Hartman, my pronouns are she/her/hers and I am an 871 writer's assistant and script coordinator. I’m 34 years old, I’ve lived in LA for nearly a decade and I’ve worked as a writers room assistant on six television shows.

In my last job as a writer's assistant, I made $16.25 an hour, for an average take-home check of $861.09 a week for sixty hours of work. Our weekly writer's room craft service budget was nearly double that, the lunch budget was nearly triple it.

My husband, who is also an industry assistant, and I lived with a roommate until a month ago. His moving out isn’t really a good thing - we’re not entirely sure how we’re going to make up his share of the rent.

We are putting off having children and starting a family because we can’t afford kids. We’ve been unable to build up any savings, as 90% of every paycheck goes to bills.

We’ve been unable to build up any savings, as most of every paycheck goes to paying bills. We’re currently putting off having children and starting a family because right now there is no way we could afford kids, a gamble given our age.

Like many others in the lowest-paid IATSE positions, we’ve been stuck in a cycle of financing our lives on credit cards between jobs, fighting to pay off those credit cards once we find work, only to find ourselves building those balances right back up again once the show ends.

As shorter rooms and mini-rooms become the norm, we find ourselves with longer and longer stretches of unemployment without no pay increase. WA and SC jobs are hyper-competitive and hard to come by, and without a roster we have no job security just by virtue of being in a union.

The employers have used these facts against us to keep our pay down, threatening termination and blackballing should we not accept the unlivable wages offered. I experienced this personally a few years ago.

I was working in a writers room that was relocating from Los Angeles to New York. The writers, producers, and other crew members were giving a housing allotment, per diem, and were flown first class from Los Angeles to New York.

As the writers assistant, I was told I could finance the cross country move on my then $15 an hour salary or I could quit, putting me in the impossible financial situation of either racking up debt to keep my job or going without a job altogether. #IALivingWage #IASolidarity

Many studios are mistaken in thinking we are entry-level employees. Let me assure you, we are not. Writers assistants and script coordinators have years, sometimes decades, of experience. (Check this poll, the numbers don’t lie.)

https://twitter.com/amylikestowrite/status/1407578448487346176

Every day I see job postings for writer's assistant and script coordinator roles requiring multiple years and seasons of previous experience in these positions. I personally have been in four writer's rooms where my experience has surpassed that of every single staff writer.

This experience ensures no pitches are forgotten. That joke wording is accurate. That beat sheets, outlines, scenes and dialog match what was broken on the board (and don’t tell the WGA but sometimes we’re asked to write these documents ON BEHALF of our writers).

Our years on the job guarantee scripts are proofread. That continuity between scenes, episodes, and entire seasons is correct. That scene headings match and that scene numbers are accurate. That every single department head can find and track changes draft to draft.

Any time you get revised pages at 4am to be used at 9am, a script coordinator who is on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, stayed up making sure those pages went out. This person likely makes $17.64/hr and has to fight the studio tooth and nail for the OT they constantly work.

Writers assistants and script coordinators are routinely expected to have skills and experience far surpassing those of the writers we work side by side with, writers that are afforded a WGA minimum salary of no less than $5000 a week. #IALivingWage #IASolidarity

Beyond our technical experience, we provide creative labor for a fraction of the going rate. For example, I pitched a structure for a major TV series finale. The showrunner who used that pitch, my direct supervisor, is on an eight-figure overall deal — I was working for $15/hr.

Lastly, I was fortunate enough to sit in on a couple of days of negotiations and heard several studio representatives talk passionately about their commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion, and how this commitment comes “all the way from the top.”

If that is true, if that commitment is real, then there must be a union wage floor built on the living wage data we at 871 have compiled of no less than $25/hour with a 60 hr/week guarantee. #IASolidarity #IALivingWage

I’ve worked incredibly hard for the jobs and the experience I’ve had, but I know that my privilege as a sis-white person has made that hard work much easier. To put it more bluntly, the months I haven’t been able to make rent due to my low wages, I’ve had a family to help me out.

That help comes from generational wealth acquired through the dumb luck of being white in America. Any call for diversity that does not include raising all union rates to a living wage is unserious and is destined to fail. #IASolidarity #IALivingWage

There is ZERO doubt in my mind that there is so little diversity at the top of this industry because of the pitifully low wages at the bottom. Many agencies and MGMT companies have heard #PayUpHollywood and have put their money where their mouths are when it comes to pay equity.

It is LONG overdue for the AMPTP to guarantee all union workers a living wage. If they are as serious as they claim to be about addressing the systemic racism, sexism, and classism endemic in Hollywood, accepting IATSE’s living wage proposal would be a terrific place to start.

OK! WE DID IT! #IALivingWage #IASolidarity ACTION ITEM TIME!!! HERE IS WHAT WE (THE DESTITUTE 871 MEMBERS) NEED FROM YOU (ALL OUR TWITTER FRIENDS):

1. If you are a showrunner/writer, contact your direct creative execs and let them know you support our fight for a living wage, and especially remind them how crucial it is for diversity and inclusion in the writers’ room for those positions to be paid a living wage.

2. Anyone who has relationships with Production/B.A. execs, reach out to them as well. Encourage them to urge the AMPTP to meet the minimum living wage rate ask, which is $25/hr with a 60 hour guarantee. #IASolidarity #IALivingWage

3. Read and share the stories that WAs and SCs have been sharing on Twitter with the hashtags #IASolidarity and #IALivingWage.

Thank you all for sticking with this very indulgent thread and for sticking your necks out for those of us fighting for a living wage. Your solidarity and support means the world to us, and together we can create a better, fairer, and more equitable industry for everyone!

Hell, I repeated myself in two of the tweets toward the top. Forgive me, it’s my first mega thread.