Scribes from the Writers Guild of America, or WGA, traded in their pencils and pens for picket signs and megaphones last week, striking against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, or AMPTP, for the first time since 1988.

To many, the perception is that this is a fight between the rich and the super-rich, whereas striking is supposed to be for “blue-collar” unions.

Even though 25 percent of working WGA West members made more than $250,000 in 2006, with the top 5 percent hauling in more than $660,000, almost half of the guild members (45 percent) didn’t work at all that year from a working contract. And the lowest paid 25 percent of working members made less than $37,777 — hardly qualifying as rich.

So with 70 percent of guild members earning less than $40,000 a year, it seems fair to call this a blue-collar fight, even if the top dozen working screenwriters are millionaires. The largest issue is the Internet. Currently, writers don’t receive any residual money — payment for reuse, such as a DVD purchase or a TV rerun — for any of their work streamed on the Internet.

Have you ever viewed a streaming movie on Netflix? Have you ever watched a TV episode online because you missed it live? Screenwriters don’t receive a penny for it.

The AMPTP would like the public to believe the purchase of a script is like a business transaction, and that once the producers have control of the material they can do whatever they want with it.

That simply isn’t the case. A script that is made into a TV episode or a movie is a form of authorship, just as directing a film or giving an on-screen performance is also a form of authorship.

You wouldn’t expect a novelist to sell their book for a flat fee and let the publisher reap all the benefits, would you? Imagine if J.K. Rowling had sold the rights to her Harry Potter series for $30,000. That’s a difference of billions of dollars. The difference isn’t so extreme for screenwriters, but residuals sometimes are the only income a struggling writer has in Hollywood while he or she searches for a next gig.

Economists on the WGA’s side believe that the Internet is the wave of the future, and writers don’t want to miss out on their share. With absolutely no manufacturing or distributing costs, producers currently are taking all the profit — at the expense of writers, as well as directors and actors.

Who can really blame the writers for wanting their piece of the pie? In 2006, residuals accounted for $264.3 million of the $905.8 million in total earnings for film and TV screenwriters. That’s more than 25 percent of the earnings. Adding Internet residuals to their incomes is essential for the future of writers and therefore essential to this strike.

It’s unclear whether the AMPTP is willing to negotiate with the WGA. Currently, the AMPTP’s position is not to negotiate as long as writers are on the streets, and the writers won’t end their strike without a contract for fear of looking weak.

If the strike goes on for 22 weeks, as it did in 1988, the AMPTP’s wait-out plan might work. A lot of TV programs will probably be canceled during the strike, and many writers won’t have any job to come back to unless their union caves.

So what can be done?

The writers could use a change of public perception, but they probably won’t get it. Even the best screenwriters are under the radar to the majority of the public, so their efforts aren’t usually recognized. For instance, how many screenwriters can you name? How many of these writers also are a director or an actor?

Probably none, if any.

It will be interesting to see how many TV shows and films will try to continue working without a finalized script or, at least, without a screenwriter on set.

Will any of them risk it? Jon Stewart, Jay Leno and David Letterman didn’t want to take a stab at coming up with their own material, and their shows are in rerun. My guess is we’ll be in for a long spring lineup of reality TV shows. Their writers, for better or worse, aren’t unionized.

I’m anticipating the new season of “A Shot at Love,” where Tila Tequila will try to find love within a group of 10 humans and 10 chimpanzees. Quality TV.

Mike Blasky is a State News columnist and staff writer. Reach him at blaskym1@msu.edu.