Striking Writers Guild of America negotiators suggested on Friday that they could reach new contracts with individual Hollywood studios more easily if they broke away from the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) that is leading labor talks for the industry. However, the AMPTP immediately dismissed this suggestion.
“The AMPTP member companies are aligned and negotiating together to reach a resolution,” a statement from the alliance declared. “Any suggestion to the contrary is false.”
“We want a fair deal for writers and actors and an end to the strikes, which are affecting not only our writer and actor colleagues, but also thousands of others across the industry. That is why the AMPTP has repeatedly put forward offers that address major priorities of the WGA, including a last round of offers on Aug. 17th and 18th,” the statement continued.
In a message to WGA members, the union’s negotiating team noted that traditional studios have different business models and interests compared to streaming companies such as Netflix. However, since studios and streamers both rely on the AMPTP to lead the negotiations, it “allows hardliners to dictate the course of action for all the companies.”
“The AMPTP claims to represent all of these different corporate interests, but in practice it favors inflexibility over compromise and sacrifices individual company interests in reaching a deal. This approach has produced the first simultaneous strikes since 1960,” the negotiators wrote, referring to the companion strike by the SAG-AFTRA actors’ union.
WGA negotiators revealed that they have had discussions with executives from traditional studios who are willing to negotiate terms and meet some union demands. However, since the AMPTP also represents streaming companies, which are competitors to studios, there has been no interest from the alliance to concede on some union proposals.
“So, while the AMPTP’s intransigence is hindering progress, these behind-the-scenes conversations show that there is a fair deal that addresses our issues,” the WGA negotiating team stated. “… We have made it clear that we are willing to negotiate with one or more of the major studios outside the confines of the AMPTP to establish a new WGA deal.”
The negotiators added that “the companies inside the AMPTP that want a fair deal with writers must take control of the AMPTP process itself or decide to make a deal separately. At that point, a resolution to the strike will be within reach.”
The WGA strike has been ongoing for approximately 130 days. Negotiators for the union have previously met with AMPTP negotiators but have not reached an agreement. Two weeks ago, the union sent a message to WGA members stating that the studios’ latest contract offer made some minimal concessions that were “not nearly enough.”
In its statement released on Friday, the AMPTP stated, “On many issues, including artificial intelligence, we are close. Our AI proposal guarantees that the use of AI will not impact writers’ pay, credit, or rights. We have asked the WGA to identify any remaining concerns they have with the AI offer, and they have not responded.”
The WGA negotiators acknowledged that there has been progress by the studios regarding protections against the use of artificial intelligence, “but we are not yet where we need to be. For example, they continue to refuse to regulate the use of our work to train AI to write new content for a motion picture.”
The union also accused the AMPTP of attempting to cause division among union members by publicly releasing details of its offer. Union officials claimed that the latest AMPTP offer included some salary increases, “but only for a statistically tiny category of screenwriters, excluding all but the first writers of original screenplays.”
The offer also included a guarantee of a minimum writing staff size for television, “but the loopholes, limitations, and omissions in their modest proposal make them effectively toothless,” according to the union.
The AMPTP responded by accusing the WGA of remaining “entrenched in its original position, except for a single modest change in its position on staffing in development rooms.”
The studios also made a concession by “offering to allow six WGA staff to study limited streaming viewership data for the next three years,” but a viewership-based compensation package would have to wait until the next contract negotiations in three years, according to the union.
“In the meantime, no writer can be told by the WGA about how well their project is doing, much less receive a residual based on that data,” according to the WGA negotiators.
As per the AMPTP, the studios’ offer includes the largest pay increase for the WGA in 35 years, with a 5% increase in the first year, followed by bumps of 4% and 3.5% in the following two years.
The WGA had initially sought a 6% increase to minimums and residual bases in the first year, with 5% increases in the second and third years, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The studio offer also includes increased authority for showrunners to determine staffing in the writing room, as well as extensive protections for writers against the use of artificial intelligence and increases in residuals for streaming programs, according to the AMPTP. The studios have also agreed to provide details on streaming viewership numbers, with the union pushing to tie compensation to those figures.
The studios have generally stated that they want the WGA and SAG-AFTRA to agree to similar terms already approved by the Directors Guild of America, which includes a roughly 12.5% salary increase and an estimated 21% jump in streaming residuals, along with assurances that artificial intelligence will not replace human labor.
“The WGA has achieved significant gains for its members during this negotiation process and holds the power to move this negotiation forward by responding to the AMPTP’s most recent offers on key issues,” the AMPTP said in Friday’s statement. “The AMPTP, including all its member companies, remains eager to reach resolution.”
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