The Writers Guild of America—the union representing oppressed professional screenwriters—has announced that its members will to go on strike against the studios, production companies, and networks that employ them. A vote by the WGA board this morning is expected to implement the decision. The strike will begin on Sunday or Monday.

In the meantime, negotiations will continue, and an agreement is still possible.

Some 3,000 of the union’s 12,000 members attended a meeting yesterday to discuss the issue. A week ago the membership had authorized a strike, with 90 percent supporting it and only 10 percent opposing.

As ever, the writers are claiming they’re being cheated, and the companies are pleading poverty.

The main argument is over revenues from new media outlets such as internet downloads. The writers want a piece of the action immediately, and the producers, studios, and networks claim the new distribution methods are still in the experimental stage and don’t yet bring in any appreciable net revenue.

The companies could easily prove this by opening their books, but that would expose the outrageous financial misappropriations—known in the law as embezzlement, fraud, extortion, and the like—through which they’ve always robbed and cheated everyone who has ever dealt with them.

The writers, for their part, are walking out in order to gain a small slice of a currently minuscule market in the expectation that it will someday be a big source of income. DVDs brought in $16.4 billion last year, whereas estimates of current annual income from web downloads are $158 million for movies and $194 million for TV shows.

The latter is a huge amount of money to most people, but in Hollywood it’s pocket change with which to under-tip parking valets.

The result is that production of new scripted movies and TV series will halt when the scripts currently in hand run out, which should be a matter of several weeks.

This will not bother most sane people.