STRIKE COVERAGE: Soap Writers Say They Won't Cross Picket Line
WGA West Memo Contradicts Report, Comments from WGA East; Y&R Writers Claim They Won't Cross
By Marisa Guthrie -- Broadcasting & Cable, 11/14/2007 10:52:00 AM
The Writers Guild of America West sent out a memo late Tuesday directly contradicting a report that multiple writers on CBS soap The Young and the Restless had informed the guild that they intended to cross the picket lines and go back to work on the Los Angeles-based series.
“As the writing staff of The Young and The Restless gathered to share pizza together -- something we have vowed to do weekly until the strike ends -- we were incensed to read the incorrect information printed in Variety that several writers on our show sought financial core status.
"Our entire writing staff of 18 is united and we fully support our union. Not a single person who was writing for Y&R when we struck has gone core. Not one. We stand united with sore feet from picketing. Well, some of us sit. But we all do our part, and we cannot be parted,” the statement read.
It was signed by all 18 Y&R writers and concluded with this aside: “The Y&R writers have been asked how long the strike will last. We know it will last as long as it takes to get a fair contract. We've also been asked if Jack Abbott will prove Victor Newman is a killer. We could answer that, but we're not going to, because we are not writing.”
The release comes on the heels of comments Tuesday evening from a Writers Guild of America East spokesperson, who condemned the reported plans to cross the picket line as "only prolonging the strike" and said the writers would "never be full members of the Writers Guild again" if they crossed.
A post on WGA blog United Hollywood blamed the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers for spreading what it termed "disinformation" and explained that it was a "nonwriting [Y&R] producer who has WGA membership from previous work" who has "chosen to go fi-core and become, effectively, a scab."
"Mysteriously, big lies are leaked to Variety and printed -- like the "story" that two writers for The Young and the Restless have gone "fi-core" and are, in effect, abandoning the strike effort. And, of course, that isn't true," wrote WGA member Laeta Kalogridis, a producer on NBC's Bionic Woman, in a blog post.
The writers' strike has come at an inopportune time for the genre as a whole as ratings have declined in the face of shifting viewer habits. NBC this year shunted Passions to its satellite channel on DirecTV and the long-running Days of Our Lives may not be long for the network.
For full coverage of the strike, click here.
