No offense, but a writer that is an employee is no different than a janitor thats an employee in my book. You do what you were hired for and you get money for said services. Case closed.
I’m not a TV writer, but I know a lot of them. So you can’t offend me.
You’re describing the old studio system, which fell apart under its own weight. It was just too expensive to keep the writers and actors on the payroll. Also comic books back in the day worked that way. Note: one of the guys who created Superman was living on welfare and blind from diabetes during his last years. The comic book company was shamed into paying him a small stipend after a series of news stories on TV.
The model isn’t the janitor, but the book writer who receives a royalty for each book sold.
By the way, this is how Bill Gates got rich. He turned down IBM’s offer of a relatively large flat fee for DOS and settled for a lesser amount plus royalties for each copy sold and the right to sell DOS to other companies. He treated software as intellectual property and not product.
p.s. — The studios and production companies prefer the residual arrangement. Their upfront risk is less under the arrangement. In effect, they are sharing the risk with the writers. If the TV show or movie is a success, then the writers take a cut of the eventual profits. If it fails, then the producers haven’t risked a great deal of money. Otherwise they’d end up paying millions of dollars for each script and not know if the show will be a success.