20.4: Going Global – Guilds in an Era of Internationalization
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- Miranda Banks & David Hesmondhalgh
- University of California Press
As indicated earlier, an important way a guild might define its work differently than a union is by emphasizing promotion of the profession or craft. This has spatial dimensions that have changed in recent decades. Where once a union would look only for local, regional, or national solidarity, in an era of globalization of the media industries, solidarity for the WGA must be threefold: within their own union, member to member and between East and West; among the WGA, the DGA, SAG-AFTRA, and IATSE; and as we explore in this section, among different countries and communities of professional writers that work for the media industries.
This international dimension is not entirely new. For most of its eighty-year existence as a trade union, the Writers Guild has offered professional support to developing guilds and associations in other countries, guiding media and cultural workers in other countries on how to respond to changes in the industry The Writers Guild of America has often called for solidarity not only among its members, but also from aspirants and fellow professional screenwriters across the globe. But in this increasingly globalized era of media production, this aspect has intensified. This was particularly noticeable during the 2007–2008 strike, when the guild made it clear that it would hold accountable any writer who broke the strike. WGA members spoke with film students, instructing them not to take writing jobs with studios as screenwriters. At stake for any writer, locally or globally, was any chance of joining the union. But the guild did not stop at U.S. borders. The WGA asked screenwriters in countries affiliated with the American guild through the International Affiliation of Writers Guilds not to work for American studios during the strike as an act of global solidarity. Having this kind of control of the market on scripts was critical to a successful strike. By including prospective writers and defining them as allies, they increased the chances of unity during the strike.
There is a contradiction in this behavior, however: this unity only confirmed that pathways for international workers into the industry—especially the American industry—are barely open. In this case, solidarity can reaffirm exclusion. And this type of international cooperation is often about leveraging power more than benevolent mutual support. Kevin Sanson argues that global cities offer opportunities for advanced capitalist countries—most notably American but also British and Australian companies—to use their diverse locales, functional technical resources, and skilled practitioners at budget prices. 29 The price of labor is significantly cheaper in part because international production labor is rarely unionized. The easiest way to keep costs low is to film overseas, outsourcing production and postproduction as much as possible to avoid the high costs of unionized labor. The economic and geographic structures of multiplatform global entertainment conglomerates have made transnational production the norm in what are still considered by most national and international audiences to be “Hollywood” productions. 30
While much of so-called Hollywood production labor is now regularly outsourced across international borders, writing has generally stayed in the United States. There are a few jobs, including screenwriting, that tend to be culturally specific: not all jobs cross borders easily or comfortably. The specificities of language and idiom, trends in narrative structure, and cultural references and social issues make writing for a global audience particularly daunting. Companies might be eager to outsource writing to other Anglophone countries, but the reality is that this still rarely occurs. And yet the WGA seems aware that it is only a matter of time before global competition becomes more fierce. Like many other industries, major media corporations are increasingly prone to outsource work to lower-cost regional media capitals. American visual effects and digital postproduction workers’ recent organizing campaigns serve as a legitimate example of U.S. labor’s anxiety about jobs going overseas. Arguably, these developments can provide opportunities for labor in Prague or Budapest or India to earn pay, build skills, build infrastructure, and achieve professional renown. And those jobs could include writing jobs.
The WGA regularly ventures overseas for conversations with other national writers’ guilds and related organizations. While part of the mission is solidarity, they also have hopes of professionalizing their international counterparts in the hope of limiting outsourcing. This represents a model of modified inclusion, something WGA West vice president Howard Rodman explained as “we can’t give you what we have, but we will help you navigate the waters to get there—in the meantime by helping you secure better wages, we will ensure that our native industry does not see your labor as enticing.” 31
Other writers’ guilds exist around the world, primarily in economically developed countries. South Africa, Israel, and Australia have strong screenwriters’ guilds. In the United Kingdom, the WGGB is part social club and part professional organization. Greece and Italy are establishing their guilds as social clubs first (with the hope that professionalization will follow).
The WGA has built connections with screenwriters’ guilds from around the world and continues to build more, in part through professional organizations like the International Association of Writers Guilds. 32 Granted, the tie with each union, association, or professional organization shifts based on the changing nature of labor relations for each individual country. One example of this is in the case of New Zealand. Though writers in New Zealand have been unionized for over forty years, the Employment Contract Act of 1989 was a terrible blow to creative labor in the country. The act transformed the nature of labor in New Zealand, terminating any chance that media workers would hold rights to residuals. Norelle Scott, a member of the New Zealand Writers Guild, explained how the act decimated the power of creative labor—and it was only writers’ affiliation with the International Association of Writers Guilds that kept its membership focused on whatever rights they still controlled. 33 It was through the strength of international partnerships that the New Zealand Writers Guild began to rebuild after this devastating blow. With their ties to the International Association of Writers Guilds, the New Zealand Writers Guild made steps forward, setting agendas and structures for international coproductions and discussing strategies for developing free trade agreements.
Writers in Greece, Italy, and France have over the years developed clear agendas as well—whether or not they are specifically stated. As U.S. formats and sensibilities are exported and transferred around the world, writers who work elsewhere are eager to import professional rights. Many hope in time not only that increased coproductions and transnational industry shifts will lure production dollars but that preproduction will also come to their countries. And with this importation, there is hope that the rights of professional writers will be redefined. American screenwriters see part of that process as making sure local writers protect themselves from their own native industry, no matter what form that native industry assumes.
The WGA has passed on to professional screenwriters across the world their frustration with media production and with the fact that directors, producers, and actors are nearly always paid better. In addition, writers rarely have much control over the way their scripts are used. Spanish screenwriter Agustín Díaz Yanes said, “The worst comment you can ever hear when you go and see a producer is when they say to you: ‘The screenplay is essential.’ That’s when you know they pay peanuts, if they pay at all!” 34 While it is not the sanctity of the screenplay that matters, Yanes’s comment about the place of the writer on the lower end of the creative hierarchy speaks to a frustration widely shared among writers working in the global media industries.
In a global media production landscape, the unique dynamics of individual careers can obscure the trends of the media industries. It is not only the power of the major conglomerates at work but also the needs of trade organizations that guide debate and discussion, as well as actions that define patterns of inclusion and exclusion and hierarchies of power. As Bridget Conor observes in her study of labor problems surrounding the Lord of the Rings trilogy (filmed in New Zealand), extraordinary displays of “empire in action” demand our attention as we study precarious labor in a global economy. 35 With the expanding frontiers of media production—even within the economy of a single film or film series—there is both a fear of what could happen if unionization is quashed on a global level and hope for what could happen if an alliance across countries were solidified among writers’ guilds.