What the members want(ed)

When the Guild's Negotiation Committee met on June 12, they needed a means of ranking the relative importance of the proposals being made to management. So, after the May 30 membership meeting, the Guild took an online survey of its active members on the e-mail list.

The survey asked respondents to consider eight contract proposals in order of priority, with 1 being most important. The "weighted ranking score" was computed by dividing the sum of all weighted rankings by the number of total responses (therefore, lower numbers are better).

In first place, comfortably leading all the proposals, was the overall economic package of wage minimums and health and pension benefits, with 255 first-place votes and a weighted ranking score of 1.4.

Second place went to the proposal that production schedules be expanded to accommodate contract holidays, with a weighted ranking score of 3.2 and 19 first-place votes.

In third place was the proposal that storyboard tests be limited to one script page; 9 members gave it a first-place vote, and its weighted ranking score was 4.3.

Here are the weighted ranking scores for the other proposals:

Eliminate unit rates for storyboards: 4.8

Storyboard revisionist category: 5.8

Script fee parity with WGAw minimums: 6.0

Animation art director category: 6.3

Staff writers paid per script in addition to weekly rate: 6.6

Animation Story Editor category: 6.9

This survey may seem moot in light of the undeniable fact that the economic package and the storyboard revisionist category were the only ones of the above that we actually got in the negotiations. But we have the basis on which to base future contract demands and goals.