From union strike captain John Aboud comes this interesting factoid about the pay distribution across the Screenwriter's Guild:
In fact, the median earnings of all members of the Writers Guild is only $5,000.
How can that be? About 48% of members do not earn any money from writing in a given year.
Of those writers who do make some money, one quarter earn less than $37,700 a year.
A recent study concluded only 20% of writers already employed would be employed on a TV series for all of the next five years. Another 20% would not be employed at all in the next 5 years.
Overpaid? Nope. This fight is not for the elite writers who are household names. This is for the average writer who just wants to make a living in what is a thriving and growing industry.
And even if the pay distribution were more equal, and the median much higher, why would we care? As Atrios says, "The main issues for the WGA are rather simple - when the studios repackage their work until the end of time in new and exciting media formats, how much residuals should they get (if any). If you fail to 'sympathize' with striking writers, you think that management should just expropriate the value of their work forever."
The question as to whether they're "well-paid" is dependent, of course, on who you're comparing them to -- they're well-paid compared to cashiers, and poorly paid compared to the studio executives they're battling. But whatever your denominator, that's not at issue here. The dispute is over residuals, and the question is whether the pay structure management is seeking to set up is fair. Whether the writers are well-paid is immaterial -- the residuals aren't being proposed as some sort of charity to help supplement the income of underpaid scribes.
