Thread by @saraschaefer1

According to the WGA negotiating committee, the studios are pushing for a "day rate" for comedy/variety writers. Truly horrifying. We won't survive something like that. #WGAStrong #WGAStrike #WGAStressed

why is a day rate is a problem? it’s a rollback from our current contract, which protects us with weekly minimum rates. And for many comedy/variety shows, we require a 13 week contract. Day rates would allow studios to hire fewer writers and overwork the writers they do hire.

Comedy/variety writers are the lowest paid in the guild and many of us are already struggling to make ends meet in the era of shorter seasons, smaller staff sizes and network churn. We don’t even have minimums for streaming. Residuals are basically non existent.

I’ve been working on a longer piece which should go to press in a few weeks, and in my research for it, I am finding the situation is even worse than I realized.

Day rates make an already destabilized career made even more unsteady. In practice, I could see them hiring 1 head writer to handle the entire show, and just bring on a few day writers for the shoot days. Bad for everyone involved including the audience seeing the final product!