On the eve of its first official meeting with the studios since contract talks broke down three months ago, the Writers Guild of America (WGA) has called on employers to come to the meeting “with a new playbook.”
“Be willing to make a fair deal and begin to repair the damage your strikes and your business practices have caused the workers in this industry,” the WGA negotiating committee urged studios in a message sent to Guild members on Thursday (August 3) afternoon.
In response, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) said in a statement that the WGA committee’s “rhetoric is unfortunate.”
“Our only playbook is getting people back to work,” the Alliance added.
The WGA revealed earlier this week that it had been invited to meet with the AMPTP on Friday (August 4). The meeting is apparently intended as a chance to discuss a resumption of negotiations rather than as a negotiating session itself. But the plan has offered the first hope of progress towards a resolution of the work stoppage.
As of Thursday, the WGA had been on strike for 93 days (approaching the 100-day mark of its 2007 action) and actors union SAG-AFTRA for 21 days, in the first stoppage by both groups since 1980.
In its message to members, the WGA accused the AMPTP of having employed a “tired anti-union playbook straight out of the 2007/08 strike. Now, two unions are on strike and the industry is three months into a shutdown that is causing delay after delay to TV and movies. It is obviously past time for the companies to get a new playbook - one that recognizes the legitimate issues that caused these strikes and takes steps to address them.”
The Guild blamed the employers for providing “calculated disinformation about the real impact of the ongoing strikes” and of using “the suffering of other workers and businesses to pressure us to settle.”
“We’re not falling for it,” the message said, though it added that the Guild “won’t prejudge what’s to come.”
The AMPTP’s statement said simply that Friday’s meeting “is to determine whether we have a willing bargaining partner.”
The exchange of strongly worded statements tempers hopes that Friday’s meeting might lead to a breakthrough in the labour strife. Even if studios and writers begin talking again in earnest that could still leave studios and actors in a stalemate.
After news broke earlier this week of the Guild-Alliance meeting, SAG-AFTRA national executive director and chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland told the trade press that his union has not heard from the AMPTP since the actors’ talks broke down on July 12.
“We are ready, willing and able to return to the table at any time,” Crabtree-Ireland said. “The only way a strike comes to an end is through the parties talking and we urge them to return to the table so that we can get the industry back to work as soon as possible.”
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