Sarah Treem: Why I am running for the WGA board

I’ve been a WGA member for over 12 years. I’ve been nominated for three WGA awards, won two. I marched in the picket lines last strike. I believe strongly in the importance of this guild. I’ve brought multiple writers into this union during my tenure as a showrunner, from outside fields like playwriting and journalism, and also by promoting from within. During the final season of my show The Affair, three of the credited writers started as assistants in some capacity or another. I consider myself a writer’s writer. I never put my name on another writer’s script, no matter how much rewriting has taken place. I take my responsibility towards younger writers and ensuring their livelihoods incredibly seriously.

I believe the system needs to be reformed, but not decimated. I believe in our ability as a union. With the right leadership and the right negotiators, we can reform our relationship with agents and get working writers a more equitable distribution of wealth. I believe we must focus on our health and pension fund, the lifeblood of membership, and not weaken our union with endless lawsuits that are paid for by member dues. And I know we have to focus on the AMPTP negotiations coming up in 2020, where our residuals, health and pension are going to be under attack by the Companies. These things are vital to all our members and must be protected in perpetuity.

Why I believe in negotiation to resolve the agency crisis.

The cause is a good worthy one, and abuses have occurred that need to be checked. But I also believe that advocacy, for so many of us, goes beyond compensation. I have never found our current Guild to be a particularly supportive place for working mothers. When I was pregnant with my second child and running my show, I reached out to the Guild, assuming we had some parental leave mandate in place — but the WGA couldn’t help me. They just referred me to the California Disabilities Act. It was my agent who managed to convince the network to push the show’s premiere date back and get me six weeks of leave. It wasn’t enough, but it allowed me to have my baby and keep my show. My agents also pulled a hat trick off for me when I was pregnant with my first child and had written a spec script while working on another show. I was seven months pregnant and living in Baltimore and I had one day off work to fly home and see my doctor. On that day, my agents scheduled two pitch meetings for me at HBO and Showtime. They walked me in to both, me and my huge belly, and we sold the show in the room at Showtime. I went back to Baltimore, finished my current job, had my baby and eight months later, I was sitting on the set for my own show. I want all women writers who are considering children to have faith that they’ll be able to have babies without derailing their careers. I had to rely very heavily on my agents for that sort of support and confidence, but I want the Guild to provide a safety net as well. I want us to have a paid parental leave policy, guaranteed, for all writers, no matter what level. That’s a tricky thing to accomplish in contractual employment but it’s not impossible and if I were elected to the Board, I’d make that my top priority.

While I don’t believe writers should have to have agents to ensure their basic parental rights, I do believe that our agents can be partners in that fight. Good agents are necessary parts of this eco-system because making a living in this industry is always a bit inconsistent. We have no real job security, not long term. We don’t make partner; we don’t get tenure. We need advocates who are looking out, not only for our paychecks, but for our mental health, our ability to plan and raise children while maintaining our careers, to help us fight for certain jobs and know when to walk away from other ones. It really worries me that the Leadership has been promoting self-advocacy during this uncertain time. Self-advocacy is neither as easy, nor as successful, for women as it is for men and gender bias has never been addressed once during this campaign. We need board members and elected officials who have experienced sexism and discrimination in this industry and know how essential it is for the Guild to address these problems head on. Asking a young black woman or an older white man to call Business Affairs and advocate for their own salaries is not the same ask. It just isn’t. We cannot ignore that discrepancy.

We must prepare for our 2020 AMPTP MBA Negotiations.

The long and the short of it is, I think we need our agents. We need to get back to the table. We have a momentous negotiation coming up with the AMPTP. Anyone who cannot see that we are barreling back towards a new old-fashioned studio system is not paying enough attention. But the studios now have new names. This backend that we’re fighting so hard for our agents not to have a part of? It’s disappearing. It’s already on its way out. The studios are offering money upfront to own a writer’s work entirely and in perpetuity. If this happens, in another two or three or five years, we will simply be employees; some better paid than others, but we will be owned. Our work can be streamed or sold, over and over again, within huge integrated platforms, and we will get nothing. That is the reality of what’s already happening. This next fight is an enormous, essential one. For the future of residuals and the concept of a backend. To say our agents’ interests are not aligned with ours isn’t good enough. We have to actively negotiate a real solution, so our interests are aligned. This is an opportunity to invest our time, energy and skill into reinventing our relationship with the agencies. To recognize we can use that relationship to build power and influence for all writers, instead of throwing away valuable potential allies when we need them. They need us to create the work. And we need them to defend our rights of ownership over that work and compensation for it, not just in the moment of creation, but for years to come. I believe what happens this year is going to change the course of writing as a career in Hollywood. We will either hold on to revenue from our work in content-distribution landscape that is changing profoundly and at a dizzying speed. Or we may lose our right to what we create, entirely and forever.

I currently have a deal with an affiliate company, and while I like working with the players very much, I was surprised to find their involvement presented to me as a fait accompli when it came time to do my contract. That needs to be looked at. The affiliate companies need to be examined. Packaging needs to be reformed. But I know there is a deal to be made and made swiftly with the ATA that will redistribute wealth to all the writers who help create a successful television show, ensure an agency no longer claims a package on a show if the creator is let go, support the survival of a robust health and pension fund and lock us into a very powerful partnership to face the monumental negotiation ahead of us, with our agents as advocates at our sides. I hope I can count on your vote.

— Sarah Treem