LOS ANGELES: After talks with studios and streamers over pay and other conditions came to an impasse, the union representing thousands of Hollywood television and film writers announced that they would go on strike on Tuesday (today).
Due to the strike, late-night programming may come to an abrupt end, and upcoming television shows and motion pictures may see significant delays.
The Writers Guild of America (WGA) board members said in a tweet, “Acting upon the power given to them by their memberships, they have voted overwhelmingly to call a strike.”
The writers’ union claimed American studios’ responses to its requests had been “wholly inadequate given the existential crisis writers are facing.”
The announcement followed a statement from the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), which speaks on behalf of studios like Disney and Netflix, stating that talks “ended without an agreement.”
The last time Hollywood writers went on a 100-day strike was in 2007 when the strike cost the Los Angeles’ entertainment industry an estimate $2 billion.
This time, the two sides are at odds as authors call for increased remuneration and a bigger piece of the revenues from the booming streaming industry. At the same time, studios assert that they must reduce expenses owing to financial concerns.
In a “gig economy,” according to the WGA, writing would be “an entirely freelance profession.” This is what studios are allegedly trying to accomplish.
The AMPTP claimed to have provided a “comprehensive package proposal” with better compensation for writers.
However, it refused to make any further improvements to that offer “due to the size of other suggestions still on the table that the Guild keeps insisting upon.”
Writers claim that it is becoming hard to make ends meet since earnings have stagnated or dropped after inflation, even though businesses are doing well and paying CEOs hefty salaries.
According to the AMPTP statement, the WGA’s demands for “mandatory staffing”—which would oblige studios to hire a specific number of writers “for a specified period of time, either needed or not”—were key point.
Another key point is reworking a mechanism determining how writers were paid for streaming episodes. These episodes frequently linger on services like Netflix years after they were originally produced.
Writers have received “residuals” for years from every time their work is reused, whether it be via DVD sales or television reruns.
