WGA

IATSE Members Launch Reform Caucus As Hollywood Strikes Wrap

November 12, 2023 Lisa Xu, Labor Notes. Organize! Hollywood, IATSE, SAG-AFTRA, Unions, WGA, Worker Rights and Jobs

After supporting screenwriters and actors through a months-long double strike, film and television crew workers are finally stepping into the spotlight themselves. Dissatisfied with their union’s leadership and direction, a group of members of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) is launching a reform caucus called CREW, or the Caucus of Rank-and-File Entertainment Workers. Their first public event will be a webinar on November 16 on preparing for the 2024 expiration of the main pattern-setting contracts they work under, the Hollywood Basic Agreement (HBA) and Area Standards Agreement (ASA).

To Live And Strike In Hollywood

October 20, 2023 Gary Phillips, The Stansbury Forum. Resist! History, Hollywood, Strikes, WGA, Worker Rights and Jobs

In the seminal book The Hollywood Writers’ Wars by Nancy Lynn Schwartz, completed by her mother Sheila Schwartz upon her daughter’s untimely death, the internal and external battles of Writers Guild of America, WGA, formed in 1933, were chronicled. The Schwartz’s note of this then bourgeois gig: It was a great time to be prosperous, young, and progressive in the movie kingdom. You could live better than nine-tenths of the nation yet remain, through political activity, intimately connected to the pulse of humanity. That connection would prove to not just be blue-collar lives put to paper and screen by a bunch of lefties and their hardcore red buddies. By the 1940s, writers were seeking to better their working conditions.

Negotiating With Hollywood: Writers’ Representatives Tell The Story

September 30, 2023 Jeremy Fuster, Portside. Strategize! Hollywood, Media, Unions, WGA, Writers' Strike

Writers are finally back to work in Hollywood after the WGA and studios reached a deal, which has left many in the industry asking, “What took so long?” Chris Keyser and David A. Goodman, the co-chairs of WGA’s negotiating committee, pin the blame on the stall tactics that the studios used alongside the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, one that was rendered ineffective by the solidarity built between the WGA and other unions throughout the summer. “The AMPTP was created in the 80s during the Reagan era, a very anti-labor time. Now, labor is reasserting itself over the last few years, and the AMPTP can’t use old tactics anymore of stalling and trying to squeeze the unions,” Keyser told TheWrap.

Hollywood Writers Secure Tentative Deal After 146 Days Of Strike

September 26, 2023 People's Dispatch. Resist! Hollywood, Strikes, Victory, WGA, Worker Rights and Jobs

After nearly five months, striking writers have secured a tentative agreement with Hollywood studio bosses. In a statement released on Sunday, September 24, the Writers’ Guild of America (WGA), which has been organizing the strike, announced that “an agreement in principle on all deal points” have been arrived at by the bargaining team. The deal comes after the latest round of talks between the bargaining team of the WGA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), while writers completed 146 days on strike. As per reports, the latest round of talks reached a major impasse on Saturday, but the AMPTP relented on a mutually agreeable deal on Sunday.

Strike Of 160,000 SAG-AFTRA Members Imminent Tonight

July 13, 2023 Mike Elk, Payday Report. Resist! Actors, AFTRA, Hollywood, SAG, Strikes, WGA, Worker Rights and Jobs

It appears imminent that 160,000 members of SAG-AFTRA will go on strike tonite at midnight PST (3 AM EST), joining 11,000 Writers Guild, who have already been on strike for nearly three months. SAG-AFTRA and the studio association AMPTP appear very far apart on several key issues, particularly the use of Artificial Intelligence, and a strike seems imminent. Additionally, many members of SAG-AFTRA have been angered by comments by studio directors that they intend to “starve out” the Writers Guild and only return to the bargaining table this fall.

Daily movement news and resources