Burritos for Striking Writers

Writers Guild of America members are now entering their third week on strike. Help us deliver burritos to the picket lines once a week until the writers win their demands.

Over the last decade, depressed wages and inflation mean that take-home pay for writers has dropped by 23%. Although writing jobs are competitive and the top jobs are well paid, the industry is very insecure and few writers can rely on ongoing work in their sector. They want minimum staffing guarantees and a minimum number of guaranteed weeks of writing each season, which the studios rejected out of hand.

Writers also face new challenges with the proliferation of streaming platforms — writers who work on streamed shows can earn as little as half of what broadcast TV writers do. With the rise of AI like ChatGPT, writers are worried their jobs will be replaced by automation so that studios can cut down on labor costs.

Meanwhile, industry profits have risen from $5 billion in 2000 to $30 billion in 2021 — that's a 500% increase in profits! The last time the WGA struck 15 years ago, it lasted 100 days and cost over $2 billion. The WGA's demands only cost $430 million a year. It's entirely feasible for the studios to meet every single one of the writers' demands and still turn a profit to line their pockets. Read more about the WGA's demands here — as well as the pathetic offers the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) has made to writers.

The WGA is nearly 12,000 members strong. But there are many thousands more of us that support their fight. We know that what the writers win will set a standard for the rest of the industry. The Screen Actors Guild and the Directors Guild of America contracts both expire in the coming months. Even beyond the entertainment industry, every time a union wins their demands for better pay and conditions, it makes it easier for every other working person to win in their own sectors as well.

When you chip in for a picket line burrito, you're not just supporting a striking writer, you're contributing to a labor movement that is raising wages for all of us.

Burritos prepared by our friends at Zingo Tacos, a family restaurant in El Sereno in east LA.

Organized by LA members of the socialist groups Marx21 and Tempest. Our members led the popular Tacos for Teachers project during the victorious UTLA teachers' strike in 2019, delivering $50,000 worth of tacos to hungry educators on the picket lines. We also organized Varenyky Solidarity in 2021 to raise money for BIPOC and LGBTQ+ refugees escaping the war in Ukraine.