A letter from David Young to union members

To the Membership: First, I want to express my gratitude to all the members of the WGA, SAG, IATSE, and Teamsters, and all of the TV and film fans who have bonded together to help get our message across. The response from the community has been wonderful and we have much to be thankful for. Today’s rally, with the entire roster of actors from several top TV shows, as well as some of the most influential feature actors in the business, meant more to our membership than we can express. However, the reason for this message is the AMPTP has been making some misleading statements. I want to make sure you know the truth. They say writers are already paid residuals for digital downloads. That’s true. We are paid one third of one cent per dollar made by Studios for digital downloads. One third of a cent. This is a paltry amount for work that we have created. We are asking for 2.5 cents per dollar, which is what we currently make on ad‐supported TV programming. The AMPTP says that we were given $260 million in residuals in 2006. This was our contractual share of a record setting 20 billion dollars the studios earned from reruns of the work we created. The companies’ rollbacks would cut our residuals in half. The AMPTP says that, when they walked out of negotiations, an offer was on the table to pay writers for Internet streaming. This is misleading. Nothing but rollbacks were on the table when they walked out, and they have yet to provide an economic proposal, after three and a half months of our requesting one. We have presented them with ours and we are ready and eager to hear their response. Be forewarned, The AMPTP has a large advertising budget, and we can expect them to issue many more misleading statements. We know, however, that the truth will prevail. Sincerely, David Young