Which side are you on?

To add some actual data to my previous post about the Writers Guild strike, Ezra Klein passes along some numbers:

[T]he 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.

Some of those 48% of Guild members undoubtedly are not writing anything. Certainly all of them are working in other jobs so that they can, you know, eat. Most, though, are still writing, coming up with ideas, pitching scripts and concepts. All for no pay. It's a cost-free research and development department for the studios. They can just externalize the cost of keeping those writers alive onto the writers themselves, who must work day jobs.

I'm not saying that there is a different or better way that this could work, but it does highlight the importance of this union and of writers getting a decent share when they do find writing work.


Update: Digby reminds us of the violence that the entertainment industry unions had to overcome in the 1940's. Like very nearly all unions in this country (if not the world) the companies tried to kill the union with physical force.