Writers Guild of America leaders said Monday night that the guild was forced to strike at midnight PT because its proposals to the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers over nuclear contract issues “fell on deaf ears.”
Money is a big deal — the guild is seeking a new deal that would increase wages and benefits by $429 million over three years, but says the studios have offered only $86 million. But maintaining writing as a profession is an even bigger problem, to sum up what the strike is about.
In a phone interview with Deadline shortly after contract negotiations broke down, Meredith Stiehm, president of the WGA West, and David A. Goodman and Chris Keyser, the co-chairs of the WGA negotiating committee — the last two former presidents of the WKV West – describes how the companies “crippled” the guild. from the beginning of negotiations, a “constellation” of proposals demanded by guild members.
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“I’m just surprised about the discussions we haven’t had,” Stiehm said of the negotiation rounds. “We have been talking to them here for six weeks and those core proposals have literally been ignored. And we made it very clear to them that 98% of our members want us to fight for something else; not just the usual negotiations we had. We told them from the beginning that members felt an existential threat and they had to take it seriously. And it just fell on deaf ears. They just didn’t seem to hear us when we told them about the plight of writers and how much has gone wrong and that they need to fix it. And it just seemed like they weren’t listening.”
“The biggest problem we had during these negotiations was that the companies didn’t want to address a whole host of core issues that affect a writer’s ability to sustain a career,” Goodman said. “So we’re far apart because the companies didn’t want to talk to us about these issues, so we were far apart in that sense. There were other areas of negotiation where we could negotiate, but the companies blocked us on very important issues. They didn’t want to talk about it.”
Topics that the AMPTP did not want to discuss, according to the WGA, include minimum staffing levels, the establishment of viewer-based stream breaks, the use of artificial intelligence and full retirement and health contributions for writing teams, according to Guild.
The AMPTP said in a statement tonight that “the main sticking points are ‘mandatory casting’ and ‘staff tenure’ – guild proposals that require a company to staff a program with a specified number of writers for a specified period of time, regardless of whether it is necessary or not.”
Check out the WGA’s proposals and the AMPTP’s offers here.
The AMPTP also said it was “ready to engage with the WGA to break this deadlock,” but guild leaders called it “disingenuous.”
When asked if the guild was willing to continue the discussion, Goodman replied, “We’re willing to talk about the issues we’ve raised, but they’re not willing to talk to us about those issues. So when they say they are ready to talk, they are being dishonest. They are willing to let us hang around on the AMPTP, but they are not willing to negotiate our core proposals.”
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Keyser agreed. “They said: ‘Yes. If you drop everything you want to talk about, we’ll talk to you about the things we want to talk about.’”
“They literally said it,” Goodman said. “If you drop all these suggestions, we can talk about the rest.” And we won’t do that. We are here to make a deal. We have made a number of opening suggestions that companies will definitely not consider. They literally told us to drop them all. This is not a negotiation.”
Regarding the minimum cast, Keyser said, “Yeah, they say it’s one of those things they won’t do and I know they’ve emphasized it because they think it’s for their benefit, but the truth is, it is a minimal cast is just a proposal, part of a constellation of proposals across the board that begs the question: can writers have a stable, steady income over a year and throughout a career? We see a world where the number of weeks we work is slowly being eliminated; the number of writers working those weeks that don’t pay writers for the value they create. We can’t allow that. They don’t want to talk to us about AI; They talk not with us about guaranteed work weeks for comedy/variety writers; They won’t tell us about the fact that the pre-greenlight mini-room effect means writers only work for a few weeks and then most writers for the rest from the TV show You will not talk about any of these things.
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“You’re not going to talk about writers working in production, because the writing happens throughout the process. They are completely closed about this. And we think they’re closed to that because they intend to phase out our weekly hires and create a very limited type of freelance workforce in all areas of the business. And we told them from the beginning that this was not going to happen in these negotiations.”
Source: Deadline
Bernice Bonaparte is an author and entertainment journalist who writes for The Fashion Vibes. With a passion for pop culture and a talent for staying up-to-date on the latest entertainment news, Bernice has become a trusted source for information on the entertainment industry.
