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New York — Television and movie writers have declared that they will launch an industry-wide strike for the first time in 15 years, as Hollywood girded for a walkout with potentially widespread ramifications in a fight over fair pay in the streaming era.
The Writers Guild of America said that its 11,500 unionised screenwriters will head to the picket lines on Tuesday (Pacific Standard Time). Negotiations between studios and the writers, which began in March, failed to reach a new contract before the writers’ current deal expired just after midnight, at 12.01am PST on Tuesday. All script writing is to immediately cease, the guild informed its members.
Striking writers walk the picket line outside Paramount Studios in 2007, in Los Angeles.Credit: AP Photo/Nick Ut
The board of directors for the guild, which includes both a west and an east branch, voted unanimously to call for a strike, effective at the stroke of midnight. Writers, they said, are facing an “existential crisis.”
“The companies’ behaviour has created a gig economy inside a union workforce, and their immovable stance in this negotiation has betrayed a commitment to further devaluing the profession of writing,” the guild said in a statement.
“From their refusal to guarantee any level of weekly employment in episodic television, to the creation of a ‘day rate’ in comedy variety, to their stonewalling on free work for screenwriters and on AI for all writers, they have closed the door on their labor force and opened the door to writing as an entirely freelance profession. No such deal could ever be contemplated by this membership.”
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The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, the trade association that bargains on behalf of studios and production companies, signalled late on Monday that negotiations fell short of an agreement before the current contract expired.
The alliance said it presented an offer with “generous increases in compensation for writers as well as improvements in streaming residuals.”
In a statement, the alliance said that it was prepared to improve its offer “but was unwilling to do so because of the magnitude of other proposals still on the table that the guild continues to insist upon.”