WGA Urges Members to Discipline 4 Writers for 2023 Strike Violations: ‘Did Not Go Pencils-Down’

The Writers Guild of America has asked its members to affirm disciplinary actions against four writers accused of breaking union rules during the 2023 strike, with a vote on their appeals scheduled for mid-May, according to media reports.

Edward John Drake, Roma Roth, and Julie Bush are accused of prohibited writing activities during the stoppage, while Tim Doyle faces censure for an offensive social media post. The WGA West board voted last week to expel Drake and Roth, the guild’s harshest penalty. Bush was temporarily suspended and given a lifetime ban from serving as a strike captain. Doyle was publicly censured.

“Every Guild member knows what it means when there’s a strike: pencils down,” the board wrote in its appeal to members, Variety first reported Saturday. “[Drake] did not go pencils down during the strike.” Guild leadership did not immediately respond Saturday to a request for comment.

Drake, writer-director of the indie film “Guns Up,” allegedly engaged in “scab writing” and withheld key documents from investigators, the board said. He has denied any wrongdoing, saying he only made minor script adjustments as a director and was being punished for refusing to “name names.”

“This has been a horrible ordeal,” Drake wrote in his appeal, according to Variety. “I have been living under the guillotine of fear for months.”

Roth, who worked as showrunner on “Sullivan’s Crossing” during the strike, broke stories and revised scripts in violation of strike rules, the board stated. She maintained she stopped writing as the strike began and continued as a non-writing producer.

“I would never have knowingly caused harm to our Guild,” Roth wrote, saying personal grievances influenced testimony against her.

Bush, who is accused of revising a script for a pilot about Elon Musk during the strike, argues that she sought guild lawyers’ guidance and was not paid for the work due to the production company’s failure to meet WGA standards. “The information I provided confidentially to get help … was turned around and weaponized by Guild staff,” she wrote.

Doyle’s case involved a Facebook post referencing the strike’s 100th day with a joke image deemed offensive by some as depicting a lynching. Doyle stated it was intended as “gallows humor” about the dread writers were feeling about their industry’s future.

The board cited Doyle for “conduct prejudicial to the welfare of the Guild” and defended the public censure. Doyle wrote that the censure represented a “failure of empathy.”

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