😟 The Writers Guild of America is officially on strike

 

Source: https://deadline.com/2023/05/writers-guild-strike-begins-1235340176/

The Writers Guild of America is on strike.

News of the strike, which takes effect in a few hours, came late Monday after the guild’s negotiations with the AMPTP failed to reach an agreement on a new film and scripted TV contract. It’s the WGA’s first strike since the 100-day walkout of 2007-08.

Less than an hour after talks with the studios ended and over three hours before their current contract officially expires, the guild made the labor action announcement public:

 Following the unanimous recommendation of the WGA Negotiating Committee, the Board of Directors of the Writers Guild of America West (WGAW) and the Council of the Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE), acting upon the authority granted to them by their memberships, have voted unanimously to call a strike, effective 12:01 AM, Tuesday, May 2.

The decision was made following six weeks of negotiations with Netflix, Amazon, Apple, Disney, Discovery-Warner, NBC Universal, Paramount and Sony under the umbrella of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP). The WGA Negotiating Committee began this process intent on making a fair deal, but the studios’ responses have been wholly insufficient given the existential crisis writers are facing. 

The companies’ behavior has created a gig economy inside a union workforce, and their immovable stance in this negotiation has betrayed a commitment to further devaluing the profession of writing. From their refusal to guarantee any level of weekly employment in episodic television, to the creation of a “day rate” in comedy variety, to their stonewalling on free work for screenwriters and on AI for all writers, they have closed the door on their labor force and opened the door to writing as an entirely freelance profession. No such deal could ever be contemplated by this membership. 

Picketing will begin tomorrow afternoon.

As well as declaring a strike status tonight, the guild said when and where the first picketing will take place. With locations such as Netflix’s Hollywood offices, CBS TV City near the Grove and the other usual suspects of Disney, Universal, and more, the initial pickets in LA will go up at 1 PM PT.

Along with the first major Tinseltown strike in 15 years, the WGA has scheduled an information session for members for May 3 at the more than 6,000 capacity Shrine Auditorium .

Even before that, as picket signs go up tomorrow, late-night shows on both coasts will be shutting down , along with writers rooms and any big-screen or small-screen project that still is fine-tuning or grinding out scripts.

The guild started making picket signs last week after issuing a long list of “strike rules,” which prohibit members from working on struck productions, and from selling and pitching scripts during the strike.

Going into the talks, the guild had been seeking a major overhaul in compensation and residuals formulae, as well as curbs on mini-rooms, where groups of writers work in advance of the production of a television series to break stories and write scripts.

Battered by low residuals, a lack of streaming data information, job insecurity and more, writers are bringing in less money overall despite a content boom in recent year of more shows and more platforms The low income most scribes are experiencing is something that neither side truly disputes, even if they have widely divergent approaches as of now on how to resolve the problem.

The guild also wants greater protections for its members’ over-scale payments, noting that with the rise of streaming, more writers at all levels are working at scale than ever before, including many showrunners.

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Additional comments: Here's what I can 100% understand from all this: Depending on how long this lasts, filming on new Seasons of the few broadcast shows I watch (including the 1 remaining NCIS show that I can still tolerate) may be delayed. And the rom coms that I love may be affected by this too, which means that unless there's backups in the works, GAF and UP TV could have trouble reaching their holiday movie quotas this year!

I know most of you won't care about this, but this matters to me because this is my escapism I'm talking about here! The 2007 strike was awful, and it caused a lot of good shows to be cancelled before their time, and many good sounding pilots also had to be rejected as well. I don't want that to potentially happen to anything I watch.

I'll try to keep you all posted on how this goes in the future.