With negotiations at a standstill, negotiators for the striking Writers Guild of America proposed on Friday that reaching new contracts with individual Hollywood studios would be easier if they broke away from the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), which is currently leading labor talks for the industry.
In a message to WGA members, the union’s negotiating team acknowledged that traditional studios have different business models and interests compared to streaming companies like Netflix. However, since both studios and streamers rely on the AMPTP for negotiations, it allows hardliners to dictate the course of action for all the companies involved.
“The AMPTP claims to represent all of these different corporate interests, but in reality, it favors inflexibility over compromise and sacrifices the interests of individual companies in reaching a deal. This has led to 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 have shown a willingness to negotiate terms and meet some union demands. However, since the AMPTP also represents streamers who are competitors to the studios, there has been no interest from the alliance to compromise on certain union proposals.
“While the AMPTP’s intransigence is hindering progress, these behind-the-scenes conversations indicate that a fair deal can be reached to address our concerns,” stated the WGA negotiating team. “We have made it clear that we are willing to negotiate with one or more major studios outside of the AMPTP to establish a new WGA deal. There is no requirement that companies negotiate through the AMPTP. So, if their own economic destabilization is not enough to motivate a studio or two or three to assert their own self-interest within the AMPTP or break away from the broken AMPTP model, perhaps Wall Street will finally push them to do so.”
The negotiators added that “the companies within the AMPTP who desire a fair deal with writers must take control of the AMPTP process or choose to make a separate deal. At that point, a resolution to the strike will be within reach.”
There has been no immediate response from the AMPTP.
The WGA has been on strike for approximately 130 days. Last month, negotiators from the union met with the AMPTP negotiators but could not reach an agreement. Two weeks ago, union leaders informed WGA members that the studios’ latest contract offer included some concessions, but they were not “nearly enough.”
The union also accused the AMPTP of releasing details of its offer publicly to create discord among union members. Union officials stated that the latest AMPTP offer provided some salary increases, “but only for a statistically small category of screenwriters, excluding all but the first writers of original screenplays.”
The offer also guaranteed 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.
WGA negotiators also noted progress by the studios on protections against the use of artificial intelligence, “but we have not yet reached where we need to be. For example, they continue to reject the regulation of using our work to train AI for generating new content for movies.”
Additionally, the studios offered to allow six WGA staff members to study limited streaming viewership data for the next three years. However, a compensation package based on viewership would have to wait until the next contract negotiations in three years, preventing writers from receiving residuals based on that data, according to the WGA negotiators.
After the union meeting last month, AMPTP officials issued a statement expressing their focus on resolving the strike and highlighting the benefits of the alliance’s counter-offer to the union’s proposals.
“The offer acknowledges the crucial role that writers play in the industry and emphasizes the companies’ commitment to ending the strike,” the statement from AMPTP stated.
According to the AMPTP, the studios’ offer includes the largest pay increase for the WGA in 35 years, with a 5% increase in the first year and increases of 4% and 3.5% in the following two years.
The WGA had requested a 6% increase to minimums and residual bases in the first year, followed by 5% increases in the second and third years, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The studio offer also included increased authority for showrunners to determine writing room staffing and extensive protections for writers against the use of artificial intelligence, along with increased residuals for streaming programs, as per the AMPTP. The studios have also agreed to provide streaming viewership numbers, with the union aiming to link compensation to those figures.
“Our priority is to end the strike so that valued members of the creative community can return to their work and to alleviate the hardships experienced by the people and businesses servicing the industry,” said AMPTP President Carol Lombardini in a statement.
The studios have generally stated that they want the WGA and SAG-AFTRA to agree to terms similar to those approved by the Directors Guild of America, which includes a salary increase of approximately 12.5% and an estimated 21% increase in streaming residuals. They also want assurances that artificial intelligence will not replace human labor.
Denial of responsibility! Vigour Times is an automatic aggregator of Global media. In each content, the hyperlink to the primary source is specified. All trademarks belong to their rightful owners, and all materials to their authors. For any complaint, please reach us at – [email protected]. We will take necessary action within 24 hours.
