Speaking with
Variety, TAG writers committee chair Mairghread Scott explained how achieving pay parity with the Writers Guild of America’s rates is a top concern for TAG, because the system as it exists now treats writing for animation and live-action as different jobs.
“There’s no difference in quality and no difference in difficulty,” Scott said. “We deserve to be paid commensurately with writers who do the same job.”
As Variety notes, writers on live-action projects (which the WGA predominantly focuses on, aside from a few notable exceptions like
The Simpsons and other Fox cartoons) have a minimum weekly pay range from $4,063 to $5,185. TGA animation writers, on the other hand, have a weekly minimum of $2,064, a substantially lower rate that carries a number of implications, chief among them being the idea that writing for animation is somehow less labor-intensive and not worthy of the same sort of compensation. Even though there are certainly differences between how the writers’ rooms for animated and meatspace shows work, they’re both places where a bunch of people get together (either physically, or virtually because this is 2021) and dream up stuff for creative teams to translate into visual art.
Pay discrepancies this sizable have a way of creating stratification within the industry that only further compounds the many other challenges workers often have to deal with, like a lack of transparency about internal job development opportunities. Because writers only make up just under 10% of TAG’s membership, and there are other groups within the guild pushing for their own priorities within the new Master Agreement, it’s unclear how successful the push for pay parity will be. As TAG heads into the next round of talks with the AMPTP, though, it’s going to be very interesting to watch how the negotiations play out.
gizmodo.com
