On Sunday, the Writers Guild of America and AMPTP reached a tentative agreement, signaling a potential end to strikes that have contributed to a five-month shutdown of Hollywood. The deal must be ratified by its members, which could take weeks. Meanwhile, SAG-AFTRA’s strike continues.
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The WGA’s tentative deal likely puts pressure on negotiations between SAG-AFTRA and the AMPTP, says entertainment attorney and Puck contributing writer Jonathan Handel. The two parties are at a standstill on a number of proposals, including basic wages that keep up with inflation. In previous sessions, SAG-AFTRA asked for a 15% increase, which Handel says has dropped to 11%. In comparison, writers asked for a 6% increase, while the Directors Guild of America secured a 5% increase.
“[SAG-AFTRA was] very clear and very explicit. ‘We will not do a deal where our members make less in real dollar terms in three years than they were making three years ago.”
He says wages are a major sticking point for two reasons. The increase in pay accounts for 85-90% of the cost of the entire deal, and it could set a precedent for future labor negotiations with other groups, including IATSE, the teamsters, and those under SAG-AFTRA’s Network Code.
Handel adds that the studios could continue to have their feet held to the fire in their negotiations with the performers’ union. “Actors are used to going months without acting work. You do 50 auditions, you're lucky if you get one job. So the idea that you could starve these people into submission, which was evidently the studio playbook, that was a doomed mission to a dead planet. It simply was not going to happen. And so in that respect, even though the companies are big, they have money. They do need content, and they're facing a union that is very unified.”
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For now, Handel says SAG-AFTRA will likely continue to have WGA allies on the picket lines, even after the guild lifts its strike.
Meanwhile, even if the WGA ratifies its contract and members return to work, actors and performers will still be needed. And if SAG-AFTRA can hammer out a new contract within a few weeks, it’ll still take time to fully restart production.
“Think of the scheduling problem. It’s hard enough to schedule a single movie because you’ve got to coordinate availability of the actors, the director, the key crew members, the locations, the soundstages, sometimes equipment is in scarce supply, specialized equipment, all of that. That's just in the ordinary course of business. But now, when the starting bell finally rings, you're gonna have something like 1500 productions, all simultaneously competing for inputs. And it's going to be chaotic until sometime into the first quarter next year, is my prediction.”
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Many KCRW staff are members of SAG-AFTRA, though we are under a separate contract from the agreement at issue between actors and studios.