Soap Opera Writers Forced By Producers To Get WGA Waivers For Less Work & Pay

[wingwalker]

Deadline article from today alleging that producers on the Soap Operas, mainly Y&R and B&B have been forcing writers to ask the WGA for a waiver to write less scripts a month in order to work around the contracted minimums.

 

Full Article: 

http://deadline.com/2015/09/soap-opera-writers-bullied-less-work-wga-writers-guild-1201511949/

[quartermainefan]

That;s pretty crummy of them, but the writers have a union for a reason and they need to speak up.   Then, as unions are supposed to do, the union should organize all their writers--including ones not even on the show---to say this has to stop or there will be no further scripts up and down the line for that producer, including nighttime.   This is Sony, so there must be other projects the union can attach to this issue.

[cassadine1991]

Wonder if this is some sort of payback for the 2007-2008 WGA Strike

[Wizzerkat]

B&B isn't a Sony show, right? They requested the most waivers.

 

[RavenWhitney]

That's why B&B has seven script writers. No one gets one script a week.  Y&R has five script writers and three of the five get at least one a week. Milstein has been getting one every other week (roughly) and Dansby started out with a lot less but has been getting more. Days has only one writer up until the Headwriter switch who was getting one per week, Ford.  GH never had this issue because they've been working with four script and four breakdown writers and all have gotten more than 50 scripts per year.  So basically Brad Bell and Sony are the violators.  No surprise

And Jamey Giddens confirmed the most waivers come from BB, YR second and Days asked for one. 

[sheilaforever]

But I don't think there is much threatening going at B&B to ask for the cut; it's probably more a team decision. Shannon Bradley is Brad's sis in law. Everyone except Michelle Val Jean is with the Bells for 25+ years by now...

[DaytimeFan]

Absolutely. The vast majority of B&B's writing staff, in addition to B&B's crew as a whole, have been with the show for 15/20/25 years at this point and it's a notoriously happy set. 

[Khan]

Worst case scenario: producers at all four soaps fire their script writers, and either they hire non-WGA members to write the scripts, or the head and breakdown writers at each soap end up taking over those duties.

[DramatistDreamer]

I do agree that the writers will collectively have to raise their voices and stand up for themselves if they are being "bullied" (article's words) into requesting waivers.  If that is the case, these producers are operating in a truly shady manner and this makes me no longer wonder why soaps cannot get new talent to write for these shows.

 

By the way, Tyler Perry is currently being called to the carpet for allegedly doing something similar--actually, he's really just firing writers who want to unionize.

[jcar03]

Remember when ABC wanted to go down to four shows a week for their shows and the union put an end to that?  This was before AMC and OLTL were canceled.  Or did I imagine this whole scenario? 

[John]

That was ATWT that wanted to do 3 days a week not ABC

 

Goutman wanted that

[LeClerc]

IIRC ABC was threatening to fire a scriptwriter from each show if they weren't allowed to reduce the number of new episodes in favor of showing more repeats. Or something like that.

[John]

oh yes thats right but WGA stopped that

[Khan]

And if anyone ever needed help writing her crappy shows, it's Miss Perry.  Believe me.