According to their union, Hollywood writers overwhelmingly approved a difficult new deal with studios, thus ending one of the longest strikes in the industry’s history.
“99 per cent of WGA members have voted in favor of ratifying” the contract, allowing them to return to work on improved terms, said the Writers Guild of America on social media. Approval by the union’s 11,500-odd members had been widely seen as a near-certainty.
After 148 days of strike action, WGA negotiators last month secured an agreement with companies like Netflix and Disney that included improved pay, more robust protections against artificial intelligence, minimum staffing requirements, and other provisions. The majority of authors started returning to work again over two weeks ago in anticipation of the deal’s approval.
However, Hollywood’s film and television productions have yet to pick back up in full, as the much bigger Screen Actors Guild (SAG-AFTRA), which represents 160,000 actors, is still on strike. After going on strike in July, negotiations between the studios and SAG-AFTRA finally started last week and were slated to continue on Monday.
The demands of SAG-AFTRA about salary and potential restrictions on the usage of AI are more stringent than those of the authors. The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which spoke on behalf of the major studios in the industry during negotiations with the WGA, applauded the writers’ vote results.
“The AMPTP member companies congratulate the WGA on the ratification of its new contract, which represents meaningful gains and protections for writers,” it said in a statement. “It is important progress for our industry that writers are back to work.”
