Adam Conover didn’t realize just how precarious a position television writers were in until he was, technically, their boss. It was 2020, and the stand-up comedian had just sold The G Word, his second television show, to Netflix. Conover was a writer and member of the Writers Guild of America (WGA) West union, but he was also one of the show’s executive producers. One day, as the production staff discussed the writing calendar for the limited series and how many writers they planned to hire, one producer mentioned a benefit that came with partnering with the streaming giant.

“He says, ‘Hey, good news: because we’re on Netflix, we can do whatever we want with writers: there’s no minimum compensation and there’s no minimum term of employment — we could hire and fire them by the day if we wanted,’” Conover told me. “He was talking about how great this was, and other executive producers were like, ‘That’s wonderful for us!’ But my blood ran cold, because I didn’t realize how poor writers’ terms were for the type of comedy I do — specifically, it was a comedy/variety show, which has abysmal terms in streaming. We actually have no terms whatsoever, we have no minimums of any sort.”

In its counterproposal to the WGA during negotiations for a new three-year contract, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) wants to permanently lock in that lack of minimums for comedy/variety writers. Under the terms sought by the studios, writing for shows like The G Word would be done on a day rate, turning television writing into a true gig job with zero security, something a comedian does between stand-up sets.