Members are being polled on their favorite picket line times as Hollywood waits to see if the shutdown will happen
Two people with knowledge of the talks said some progress has been made in the past week, though they would not specify which issues are moving forward to protect the confidentiality of the labor talks. The individuals also said that despite exchanging new proposals later this week, there are other issues where the two sides “are still far apart,” as one insider said.
Meanwhile, the WGA emailed the survey to its 20,000 members on Sunday giving their preferred picket line times and locations should a strike be ordered. All guild members are required to attend the picket line “absent a valid medical excuse, non-writing employment, compelling personal circumstances”. [e.g., essential child or elder care] or emergency,” according to the Guild strike rule.
Sometimes the threat of a deadline can lead to an agreement over timeout, as happened in the fall of 2021 when the IATSE and AMPTP reached a bargaining agreement less than 48 hours before the strike deadline below. had come The Line Crew Union. In 2017, a tentative agreement between the WGA and AMPTP was announced by both parties 15 minutes after the midnight strike deadline.
But the talks come at a time when the WGA has united behind a push for drastic change to ensure “the survival of writing as a profession,” it said in a memorandum. The rank and file clearly agree as more than 9,000 guild members authorized their leaders to issue a strike if a deal is not reached by Monday night’s deadline.
With the prospect of a strike shutting down Hollywood not only real but quite likely, the situation is being addressed by the first line of programming that will be affected: late night television.
“If you don’t see me here next week, know that this is something that is not done lightly,” Seth Meyers told his “Late Night” viewers Last week when he explained to her about the WGA talks. The host said the last WGA strike in 2007–2008 was “pathetic” when he was head writer for NBC’s “Saturday Night Live,” but also insisted that “what the writers are asking for is not unreasonable, and a proud As a member of the Guild, I am proud to be an organization that looks out for the best interests of writers.
Currently, “SNL” has scheduled a new episode to air this coming Saturday with alum Pete Davidson hosting for the first time since leaving the sketch show, but if the strike occurs, it and other late-night shows Instantly it would go dark, putting hundreds if not thousands of production crew members out of work.
The ripple effect of the strike will likely then extend into the fall TV season, as writers typically begin working on new seasons of network and cable shows in May and June. If there is a strike, the working hours will be completely wiped out, as the AMPTP and WGA will not return to the negotiating table until the end of June at the earliest.
This is because AMPTP has already reached agreements with the Directors Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA to begin negotiations on their bargaining agreements, with DGA talks scheduled to begin on May 10 and SAG-AFTRA on June 7. It’s going to be The worker talks to the studio it represents, it only negotiates with one guild at a time, so the writers’ strike will not be resolved until the studio fully negotiates with the directors’ and actors’ unions doesn’t – assuming they reach an agreement with them, of course.
For all three unions, the common thread has been seeking to change how their members are paid for streaming shows and movies, pointing to WGA data that shows that nearly half of all TV writers receive a being paid at the lowest rates as compared to Rs. Third author from a decade ago. The trend of shorter episodic shows brought about by streaming has been blamed as a major factor behind this trend.
The WGA has also attributed the abuse of so-called “mini-rooms” as a factor behind the decline in writer pay, due to streamers’ practice of ordering more scripts on a project before production begins. These mini-rooms, despite serving the same functions as normal writers’ rooms, pay minimal rates and can extend beyond the initial expectation without the pressure of a production start date.
While the WGA has urged writers for years to negotiate with their agents for higher pay scales and protections when asked to mini-room, the Guild has proposed security demands for writers such as minimum staffing requirements for writers. is included in the pattern. ,
A studio insider who spoke to TheWrap on condition of anonymity said that any attempt to regulate staffing requirements or mini-room use and compensation would be a standoff between streaming studios represented by AMPTP and the WGA .
The insider added, “Studios keep tight control over their control over employment on productions and I don’t think that will change anytime soon.” “For mini-room, streamers have used this as being more selective on the productions they greenlight and more confident that they are going to get a return on investment. Are they willing to let go Are?”
Meanwhile, strike captains and member volunteers at the WGA have spent the weekend together. thousands of picket signs Should they receive orders late on Monday to put down their keyboards and gather outside Hollywood production offices on Tuesday morning. Some signs were used during the 2007 strike and have since been placed in storage, such as the “M3GAN” found by author Akela Cooper, which was signed by fellow guild member David Slack.
“We marched and then conquered,” Slack tweeted With picture of the icon. “And if we have to, we will march and win again.
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