Steeee-RIKE! Or not...

Seems to be some confusion about the announcement that the Writer's Guild membership has overwhelmingly approved giving our negotiating team authorization to strike. That does NOT necessarily mean there will be a strike, or that it's going to happen exactly on Nov. 1. It DOES mean that our negotiators go into their next work session knowing that 90+% of the membership will back them if they decide a work stoppage is the only way to be heard.

Also, it should be made clear that the vote does not mean that 90% of the membership WANTS to strike. I certainly don't! We're fully aware that a strike not only hurts our bottom line, but rolls through the rest of the entertainment community as well. Still, after being a member of the WGA for many years now, I also don't want to settle for rollbacks, or even the status quo.

I was on the periphery for the 1988 strike, which lasted four months, and it was devastating to far too many people, not to mention the business in general. Let's hope that cooler heads prevail and we can make a deal that's fair to both sides.