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| McMahon's utter tyranny is reason that not only the wrestlers should unionize, but the writers too Photo Credit: WWE.com |
If you could believe it, there's another group in wrestling that needs unionization like I need to lose about 80 pounds from my frame, and that's WWE writers. The stories that emanate from former writers about how it is to work for psychopath capitalist Vince McMahon make you wonder how they haven't tried to band together already. The latest bit of malfeasance comes courtesy of a report from Ryan Satin that McMahon called for a rewrite of Smackdown hours before the show was to go on the air. While Dave Meltzer clarified on his audio show that it was "only" the opening and closing segments. Regardless of how much of the show needed a rewrite, either portion is still too major for a script overhaul hour before air.
The thing is that this demand isn't anything new. McMahon is reported to demand rewrites the day of the show more often than someone retweets @dril on Twitter. Anecdotes from former writers paint an even more damning picture with details that corroborate McMahon as megalomaniac. The average length of employment for writers seems to be months, if not weeks. Guys like Ryan Ward or Dave Kapoor are the exceptions, not the rules. From all accounts, the writers' room appears to be a place that could be improved by collective bargaining to force McMahon to give them better treatment. The writers should unionize. In fact, even more than the wrestlers, they have an easier path to unionization as they could probably more easily join the Writers' Guild of America than wrestlers could, say, the Screen Actors' Guild. It takes some convincing the wrestlers let alone SAG to classify them as actors based on wrestling alone, but there's no denying WWE's writers write a television show. They should be in that union already. Why aren't they?
With collective bargaining, writers would be able to force McMahon to accept scripts as they are instead of demanding constant rewrites. It's true that for as bad as RAW and Smackdown can be with McMahon's heavy influence that it could be worse given some ex-writers going public with their ideas. That being said, it's not like that angle where Heidenreich would be an unfrozen Nazi with Paul Heyman (a Jewish guy) as his manager would be the norm. Quality control still needs to happen even with union organization. That being said, how many actual ideas from the writers actually make it to screen without override? How many of those ideas are actually as bad as that Heidenreich one? It's a small sample size to judge an entire group of people, and McMahon's famous megalomania seems to make it likely more than half the show is filled with his ideas. Unionization would not only stop egregious actions like rewrites hours before the show, but it would give the writers more backbone to get their ideas on screen rather than having a show dominated by the McMahon brain.
I can't think of any reasons why the writers shouldn't unionize, but again, selling them on the idea that they need it would probably be difficult. So many people in creative consider themselves management anyway, and thus they don't think they need union protection. Still, for as much as the wrestler need collective bargaining, the writers not only need it as well, but they have an easier way to get there. If they want better treatment from McMahon, they gotta join the WGA. No matter how much they think they don't need one, every report that says McMahon demands a rewrite hours before a show goes on the air, or hell, even the story where Robert Evans was fired from his writer's job because Bret Hart said McMahon's name during his Hall of Fame speech, says otherwise.
