The members of the Writers Guild of America have voted to uphold the expulsion of two writers accused of writing during the 2023 strike, but to rescind a public rebuke of a writer who made a joke on Facebook.
The WGA board voted earlier this year to kick out Roma Roth and Edward Drake for performing forbidden “writing services” — what the union calls “scab writing” — during the 148-day strike. They appealed, but 54% of the voting membership backed the board’s decision in a tally that concluded on Friday.
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On a 62%-38% vote, the members rejected the public censure of Tim Doyle, who had faced a charge of conduct “prejudicial to the welfare of the Guild” for making an off-color joke. On the 100th day of the strike, Doyle posted a silhouette of a man hanging from a tree, in what was meant to be a morbid reference to his own suicide.
Doyle apologized for the joke, which some took as a reference to a lynching. The process led to some internal concern that the WGA was going too far in policing members’ speech.
“It would be nice if the WGA made an effort to publicize this announcement to the industry,” Doyle said in a text on Friday, adding he hoped the guild would “want to undo some of the damage done over the past 18 months” by the implication that he is racist.
The members also narrowly upheld discipline of Julie Bush, a writer accused of submitting a “scab script” to a non-signatory company during the strike. Bush was given a one-year suspension and forbidden from serving as a strike captain for life. The members voted 52%-48% to deny her appeal.
“I am so grateful to the members who voted for me,” Bush said. “I believe the closeness of the vote signals that members do not like what has happened here. I have never seen a Guild vote below 90% so to me, losing by just 59 votes is meaningful.”
She said she intends to continue to fight over the legality of the WGA’s action. “Now we go to the Department of Labor and the NLRB.”
Roth was executive producer on “Sullivan’s Crossing,” a show filmed under Writers Guild of Canada jurisdiction in Nova Scotia. She was a dual WGA-WGC member, and worked under a waiver allowing WGA writers to work for non-signatory companies in certain cases. The waiver was terminated at the outset of the strike, which should have prevented her from writing on the show. Roth argued that she merely supervised the writers’ room, and denied breaking the rules. She also argued that under the constitution, a violation should have resulted in a fine, not expulsion.
In a statement on Friday, Roth said she found it “disappointing” that WGA board members “decided to send out mass emails during the voting round to tip the scale in their favor and unfairly influence what was supposed to be a fair appeals process.”
“This result will undoubtedly shape the standards by which the WGA and its Board continues to operate moving forward,” she said. “I hope members will submit their candidacy to run for the WGA Board before the May 15th deadline to address these serious issues.”
Drake wrote and directed an independent film, “Guns Up,” which was filmed during the strike. He was accused of making improper script revisions during filming, and of refusing to identify a non-member who allegedly rewrote the ending. He argued that he made minor script changes, which are explicitly not under the jurisdiction of the WGA.
Asked for a response to the vote, Drake sent a YouTube clip of the final scene of a classic film: “Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.”
Under the guild constitution, writers may appeal any discipline to the membership at an annual meeting. The WGA has not held an annual meeting for the last six years, so the board elected to hold an online vote instead.
Bush has objected to the process, arguing the board had no authority to change the appeal process without a constitutional amendment.
In raw vote terms, the vote was as follows:
Roth: 778-639 to expel
Drake: 769-652 to expel
Bush: 745-686 to suspend for one year, lifetime bar from serving as strike captain, public censure
Doyle: 915-557 to overturn public censure
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