“This wasn’t a meeting to make a deal. This was a meeting to get us to cave,” WGA negotiators said in a message to members late Tuesday.
“Which is why, not 20 minutes after we left the meeting, the AMPTP released its summary of their proposals,” the WGA said. They have been at loggerheads with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, the labor negotiating arm for major studios and streaming services. “This was the companies’ plan from the beginning — not to bargain, but to jam us. It is their only strategy — to bet that we will turn on each other.”
The writers strike has now dragged into its 115th day, and despite consistent displays of unity and well-staffed picket lines, writers are increasingly eager for it to end. Many union members are running through their dwindling savings, and with actors reaching 40 days of striking, Hollywood is at a standstill.
Nevertheless, writers and actors say they will not cave because their industry is at an existential moment — even if studios don’t see it that way.
The studios’ offer — which dates from Aug. 11 and is the only offer they have made in writing — does much to sweeten the pot for what writers were seeking, without addressing their demands in total.
“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,” Carol Lombardini, president of the AMPTP, said in a statement accompanying the offer. “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.”
The studio offer makes significant concessions in wage increases and begins to address writers’ concerns about streaming, artificial intelligence and “writers rooms” — how many writers can be hired on a show — without going nearly as far as writers would like.
Shock waves from the latest blowup leave the landscape unclear. Writers and actors believe they are striking at a moment when Hollywood is changing in so many ways that the outcome will determine whether it remains a place where talented writers and actors want to come to seek out work — which in turn will determine how Americans consume entertainment for decades to come.