The union meetings approve the agreement reached with the studios, which must now ratify the bases, and authorize the end of the strike
Hollywood already has someone to write to it again. The screenwriterswho have starred in a 148 day strikereceived this Tuesday green light from your union meetings to return to their jobs from midnight in California, hours after those boards and the negotiating committee unanimously supported the agreement reached on Sunday with the representatives of the large studios and platforms and the end of the strike. And now it remains pending that the 11,500 affiliated scriptwriters ratify the agreement, a vote that starts on Monday and will continue until October 9but the writers’ strike that began on May 2, and to which the still unresolved actors’ strike joined in mid-July, has officially ended.
The WGA reached a tentative agreement with the AMPTP. Today, our Negotiating Committee, WGAW Board, and WGAE Council all voted unanimously to recommend the agreement. The strike ends at 12:01 am. Check out our deal at https://t.co/TuGZ0CBIqw. #WGAStrong pic.twitter.com/veb4yrY1hH
— Writers Guild of America, East (@WGAEast) September 27, 2023
The unanimous vote by the boards of directors in the west and east of the Writers Union of America (WGA) has allowed the distribution of the agreement of the agreement that will govern the relations of workers with studies in the coming years three years and which is recommended to be ratified. And in a seven page summary Some of the achievements that the scriptwriters have achieved with their mobilization are confirmed, which without fulfilling all their demands does respond to many of them.
Payments, work and Artificial Intelligence
Writers, for example, are going to see raise your minimum wage by 5% in the first year of the agreement, 4% for the second and 3.5% for the third. Besides, for the first time, the studios will share with them confidential information of the hours viewers spend on streaming servicessomething that until now they kept secret.
The scriptwriters will also receive for the first time a extra compensation if your programs or series reach 20% of national viewers in their first 90 days on a platform. And they have achieved that the payments of the “residuals” who charge for viewings of their work abroad rise 76%. For example, if until now for a one-hour episode on Netflix they charged $18,684, now it will rise to $32,830.
Although they have not been able to get the studios to respond to their demand to have at least six people on the calls “writers rooms”, who develop the scripts, have managed to ensure a staff and a minimum working time. In projects in development that have at least three scriptwriters, for example, there must be a minimum of three writer-producers, and they must have work guaranteed for at least 10 weeks. And in already approved programs, and unless there is a single scriptwriter who writes the entire season, there must be at least three scriptwriters in series of up to six episodes, five in those with between seven and 12 episodes and six in those with 13 or more.
Another of the issues that had become fundamental in this strike was the Artificial intelligence, and there the scriptwriters have also scored some victories, although they have not achieved everything they wanted either. The studiesaccording to the agreement, They will not be able to use those tools to rewrite original material, although yes for scripts that they already have. Screenwriters may use technology if they need it for assistance, but Their use cannot be imposed on them. Although writers have not been able to be guaranteed that their scripts are not used to train artificial intelligence tools, they should at least be informed by studios about whether the material given to them has been generated in whole or in part by AI.
“We have won,” Meredith Stiehm, the president of the Western WGA, said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, when talking about an agreement that on Sunday the union already called “exceptional.” and whose value calculates in 233 million dollars a year.