Committee reps for the Writers Guild of America (WGA) met with studio executives this week in an effort to end the ongoing strike, but were unhappy when details of the proposed contract went public.
The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) shared details Tuesday afternoon of the contract offer initially given to the WGA on August 11, per a report from Variety. This move came after a recent meeting between WGA reps and Hollywood bigwigs including Disney CEO Bob Iger, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, and Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos, the outlet noted.
“Our priority is to end the strike so that valued members of the creative community can return to what they do best and to end the hardships that so many people and businesses that service the industry are experiencing. We have come to the table with an offer that meets the priority concerns the writers have expressed. We are deeply committed to ending the strike and are hopeful that the WGA will work toward the same resolution,” AMPTP President Carol Lombardini said in a statement which also included the contract details.
The contract addressed several of the WGA’s concerns, including provisions for a minimum 10 weeks of employment for most TV series writers and writer-producers and a pay increase for streaming residuals.
WGA committee reps said the proposed concessions were not enough and that the studios released the details with ulterior motives. They said they attended the meeting with good intentions but “were met with a lecture about how good their single and only counteroffer was.”
“We explained all the ways in which their counter’s limitations and loopholes and omissions failed to sufficiently protect writers from the existential threats that caused us to strike in the first place,” the WGA committee reps responded.
“We told them that a strike has a price, and that price is an answer to all – and not just some – of the problems they have created in the business. But this wasn’t a meeting to make a deal. This was a meeting to get us to cave, which is why, not 20 minutes after we left the meeting, the AMPTP released its summary of their proposals.”
The reps went on to accuse the AMPTP of having a specific strategy in mind. “This was the companies’ plan from the beginning – not to bargain, but to jam us,” they said. “It is their only strategy – to bet that we will turn on each other.”
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