WGA votes overwhelmingly in favour of strike action

The WGA and producers' association AMPTP are in negotiations for the current standard agreement, which expires May 1.

M embers of the Writers Guild of America (WGA) have voted in favour of strike action if the union can’t reach an agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) by May 1.

The union voted almost unanimously in favour of the strike, with 97.85% of more than 9,200 ballots cast in support of a strike action, a new record both in terms of turnout and the percentage of support for strike authorization.

“Our membership has spoken. Writers have expressed our collective strength, solidarity and the demand for meaningful change in overwhelming numbers,” the WGA said in a statement following the results.

“Armed with this undeniable demonstration of unity and resolve, we will continue to work at the negotiating table to achieve a fair contract for all writers.”

The strike vote began last Tuesday (April 11), with the WGA asking its approximately 11,500 members to weigh in on whether to commence a strike action, which would be the first since November of 2007. That strike lasted 100 days, and effectively halted work on scripted film and television, which led to a boom in development, production and commissioning of unscripted content.

The key issue at play for the WGA is compensation in the streaming era. According to a bulletin issued by the WGA in March, “short orders, the separation of writing and production, and the lack of a season calendar have depressed writer pay.” The guild also asserts that median weekly pay for writer-producer members has declined 4% in the last decade, which translates to a 23% decline, adjusting for inflation.

The guild also says that the percentage of writers working across scripted genres for the minimum established in the most recent Minimum Basic Agreement — the collective agreement that applies to most of the work done by WGA writer members — has increased.

AMPTP members include major studios such as Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures, Universal Pictures, Walt Disney Studios and Warner Bros. Discovery. Also in the mix are the major U.S. broadcasters — ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox and the CW — and the top streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon’s Prime Video, Apple TV+ and Disney+.

“Our goal is, and continues to be, to reach a fair and reasonable agreement. An agreement is only possible if the guild is committed to turning its focus to serious bargaining by engaging in full discussions of the issues with the companies and searching for reasonable compromises,” wrote the AMPTP in a statement issued before the the results of the vote were made public.

The potential harm on the entertainment business incurred by a writers strike is significant — in a report from non-partisan think tank the Milken Institute, the 2007-2008 strike was said to have resulted in the pruning of some 37,000 jobs from California’s economy, and a $2.1 billion loss.

Writers Guild of Canada (WGC) executive director Victoria Shen previously told Playback Daily that WGC members will “not accept struck work,” but any series under WGC jurisdiction will not be impacted by a potential strike. “We respect each others’ jurisdiction and support one another in advancing the rights of screenwriters around the world,” she said.

A version of this story originally appeared in Realscreen

With files from Victoria Ahearn and Justin Anderson

Image: Unsplash