To do their host work and only their host work and left everything that is normally done by a guild member (including themselves in their role as writers) undone.

On a local radio show, the host (a WGA member himself, but not active) was interviewing the WGA head about Leno, and apparently the WGA contracts have some sort of exception in them along the lines of a host exception: Material written by the host for him or herself is exempt from the strike. He didn’t know the exact wording, but he also said (about Leno, but surely Stewart and Colbert qualify) that the WGA wasn’t going to criticize hosts who engaged in that kind of thing.

Edited to add: Hosts who have been supportive of the strike, I should clarify, a category which ought to include Leno, Stewart, and Colbert, as far as I can tell.

But, the situation with Stephen Colbert and John Stewart is quantifiably different from those examples. I didn’t call them scabs in this post, because I didn’t know how they were going to go to back to work. I think it would have been possible for them to work to rule. To do their host work and only their host work and left everything that is normally done by a guild member (including themselves in their role as writers) undone. It’s a big ask, because the show would have been bad. But their options were to break their contracts, go on air and look like idiots, or scab. I do think less of them that they chose scabbing.

I understand that Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are under contractual obligations; I understand that they have been very supportive of the strike, I understand that there are lots of other people employed by these show, but crossing a picket line is crossing a picket line.

It’s a minor point, I suppose, but Katherine Heigl, to take your example, said that she wouldn’t cross the picket line unless she were contractually obligated. In my mind, if a person is in a position where they will be directly penalized in some way, and if they don’t have union support, expecting them to take the penalty as a solo/non-union move is unreasonable. If they do, that’s great, but I can’t think less of anyone who chooses not to step farther than their union will go.

For the record; I’m all for unions. I may oppose the objectives of a given union overall or over a particular issue, but I support the right of people to freely associate, to sign a collective bargaining contract with an employer, and to refuse to work and to protest if the employer fails to live up to the contract or if their contact elapses and the employer will not meet their bargaining demands for a new one. I also support the employer’s right to try to hire non-union workers if they think they can do so and get the job done, but that’s the risk anyone takes if they say “I think I am worth more and won’t work unless you pay me more”.

Regarding comments on how employers set one employee against another; I belonged to a union once. I was a cashier in a grocery store. The contract came up after I’d been there a couple of months. I went to my first union meeting (which turned out to be my LAST union meeting) to vote on the contract. I went up to the desk, showed my ID, and asked for a copy of the contract. Long story short - I wasn’t going to get to see a copy of the contract. The guy in charge stood up and told us a story about what a great job they’d done negotiating the contact and how everyone needed to vote for it. I stood up and said “I asked for a copy and couldn’t get one. No one will tell me what I’ll make under the new contract. Until someone gives me a copy of the contract and tells me what I’m going to make, I’m not going to vote for it.” The contract was voted down, over the express displeasure of the union leadership. Guess who was out of a job a month later? Hint - not the union leadership.

So you’d think I’d be sour on unions. But no; just because mine sucked and was a captive of the employer doesn’t mean they all suck. It just illustrates that an employer can co-opt employees who are there supposedly to work for their colleagues.

Also; I agree that the writers should make money if their material is presented in “new media”. Seems to me that trying to withold that is pretty damn greedy.

I’ve spent many days on the picket line with writers since the strike began (I’ll admit it was almost as much a networking opportunity as it was wanting to support their cause.) and I can verify the AMPTPs portrayal of them is patently false, the vast majority are struggling to make ends meet even more than I am.

When you look at it, they aren’t even asking for a raise… people who watch TV are slowly gravitating towards the internet, I know during the last season of Lost I didn’t watch the show on broadcast television, but rather on abc.com. All they’re asking is that they get paid for the internet what they do for television, which I can’t fault them for as they’d like to maintain their standard of living.

I only hope that Jon Stuart and Stephen Colbert go the route of scuttling their shows after being forced back a la Conan O’brien rather than taking Leno’s stance of violating strike rules.

note to add as an edit: The editors and grips etc have a clause in the IATSE contract stating that if any other union gets money via “new media” (the internet) they’ll renegotiate. These workers don’t get residuals in the way of cashy money, but in contributions to their pension and health care benefits, so solidarity and a WGA favorable resolution of this strike is not only in their moral, but financial best interest.

You may be right about how WGA members would react in the event of a strike in another branch of the industry. But industrial action tends to radicalise people, and however they would have reacted before they’d probably react differently now (and have been supporting other unions during the strike). The way you describe people behaving while NABET, is how everyone, even the actors are behaving now. Films are still being shot, even on lots with picket lines across the gates. TV scripts that had already been written were shot before the shows shut down. Most Hollywood unions have ‘no strike’ clauses, which explicitly forbid solidarity strikes in situations such as these (as a unionist I believe that anyone with an ounce of solidarity in them shouldn’t let a ‘no strike’ clause make them cross the picket line, but it does have an effect on lots of workers) One of the WGA demands is to get the ‘No Strike’ clause out of their agreement, which would hopefully lead to more solidarity between unions.

I had an interesting experience last year talking with my city’s labor unions, about five of them. Working together instead of allowing themselves to be divided and conquered like the management tried to do was very crucial to almost everyone getting good labor contracts in the era before budgets would be cut, in anticipation to at least a localized recession of sorts due to the foreclosure crisis. Strike votes, law suits, rallies at the city meetings took place during the summer. I blogged about it and several unions asked me to read something I wrote at a council meeting where they filled the chambers. It was a learning experience for me about labor union issues in the government area and the importance of solidarity.

Soaps are already starting or soon will be starting to use non-union writers like they did before in 1988. Sometimes, completed scripts just “magically” appear on producers’ desks, that kind of thing.

Those workers need to know that their picket lines will be honoured, that the actors and writers will stand on the picket line with them. Writers and Actors need to do that because solidarity is a mutal obligation, but also beause it’s in their own best interest. Unless solidarity extends across the industry the gains that are won with this strike will just temporary.

Some non-guild tech workers have already lost their jobs, especially if they worked on the shows most impacted early on by the WGA strike. I’ve got two relatives who aren’t being paid or have lost the job. A lot of jobs and related industries are non-union.

Although I support the WGA, I don’t know if the SAG or WGA would reciprocate if say, NABET were striking. In the past including recently, there’s been some cooperation between WGA and NABET regarding individual networks, like ABC/Disney for example on a smaller scale. I picketed once for NABET at ABC’s studios during one walkout in the 1990s. Members of the SAG working on a soap opera came out and watched and spoke to people, but still worked as did the writers and directors for ABC including that show. Support and crossing picket lines are two different things.

The SAG’s contract is up in June along with that of DGA so they’ll be hashing out similar issues and there’s already been warnings of striking there. The WGA worried before the strike vote that the DGA might reach a deal which would have greatly hampered the efforts of the writers. Still, WGA’s strikes tend to last a few months so they could still be conceivably on strike still by June.