Strike Watch: Writers (90 Percent) Authorize It

It was around 7 p.m. in Los Angeles when the WGA sent out their release announcing that 90.3 percent of their voting membership--based on a record turnout of 5,507 votes--had voted to authorize a strike. Writers Guild of America East President Michael Winship, more forcibly than also-quoted West Coast president Patric Verrone, threw down the gantlet: "This historic vote sends an unequivocal message to the AMPT [Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers], loud and clear. We will not be taken advantage of and we will not be fooled."

This stance was prefigured in part by an Op-Ed piece written for the Los Angeles Times by screenwriter Howard A. Rodman, who said he'd strike even though he has two feature projects in post-production and is on a hot streak in his trade. Rodman, (hose drama August stars the unusual quartet of Josh Hartnett, Naomie Harris, Rip Torn, and David Bowie), deployed an array of statistics--that each studio or network has cited $500 million or more in online revenue, that the entertainment segment of the nation's media conglomerates has grown at a compound rate of 12 % between 2000 and 2006, and that the companies pull in $2 billion more each year than previous.

He closed with a sentence that might best be enunciated by Clark Gable, or even Walteer Matthau, who starred in his screenwriting father's Charley Varrick: "Unless we fight, he companies will continue to romp away in the money bin while we're left to hang upside down like lacquered ducks."

AMPTP President J. Nicholas Counter responded to both, essaying Friday in the Los Angeles Times that "We don't see what a strike solves (estimating the cost of a five-month stoppage like the 1988 strike at $3 billion) and warning that the Internet and digital media mean "There are young people in garages and bedrooms all over the world creating new content in new ways..." and, some minutes after the WGA release went out, stating in a release that "a strike authorization vote is a pro forma tactic used by every union in the country ...we are not surprised with the outcome of this vote, given reports of how his election was conducted."

There's compelling logic that says the guild will not strike on or around their contract's expiration date on Halloween--but what follows could still be plenty scary.

(The WGA headquarters on Fairfax Avenue in Los Angeles; Photo by Lucy Nicholson/AFP/Getty Images)