News Briefs
14-week writers strike shows what solidarity can do
Feb 14, 2008 12:39 PM
Bargainers for the Writers Guild of America, East and West, agreed to a new contract on Feb. 10. The pact, which will end the 14-week strike if the 10,000 striking television and movie writers approve it, contains none of the givebacks demanded by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which is the industry’s bargaining arm. In a key gain, it gave writers new compensation formulas for work created for, streamed and rebroadcast on the Internet.
The guild was able to shut down most talk shows immediately while new television episodes disappeared. The Screen Actors Guild members’ refusal to cross WGA picket lines turned the usually glitzy Golden Globe Awards into a star-free press conference. Estimates of the strike’s economic impact have ranged from $380 million to $1.5 billion lost.
The new contract gives writers a fixed residual payment of $1,200 a year for one-hour shows streamed online in the first two years of the new contract. In the third year of the deal, writers would receive residuals equal to 2 percent of the revenue received by the program’s distributor. The new contract also covers some shows created especially for the Internet that exceed certain budget thresholds. The pact also doubles the residual rate paid writers for movies and TV shows sold online.
“It is an agreement that protects a future in which the Internet becomes the primary means of both content creation and delivery,” the guild said in an e-mail to its members. “We believe that continuing to strike now will not bring sufficient gains to outweigh the potential risks and that the time has come to accept this contract and settle the strike.”
Filmmaker Michael Moore, a Writers Guild of America-East member, called the settlement “an historic moment for labor in this country. To have the writers union stand up like we did, not give back a single thing and make them give — it was a really great moment.”
Los Angeles Times, Feb. 10, 11
