Just hours after the studios and streamers made public their latest “comprehensive package” towards a deal with the striking WGA, the guild has responded – and its seems the AMPTP and top CEOs may have strategically overplayed their hand.
In fact, 113 days into the scribes strike, talks may have broken down altogether — again.
“On Monday of this week, we received an invitation to meet with Bob Iger, Donna Langley, Ted Sarandos, David Zaslav, and Carol Lombardini,” the WGA Negotiating Committee said in an email just sent out to members (see the full WGA email to members below). “It was accompanied by a message that it was past time to end this strike and that the companies were finally ready to bargain a deal,” the note adds. of the meeting held tonight. “We accepted that invitation and, in good faith, met tonight, in hopes that the companies were serious about getting the industry back to work.”
At this point in their succinct note to members, the WGA unveil a very different POV on what went down with Iger, Sarandos and gang and the August 11 proposal they put forth — at least very different from the hyperboles the press blackout breaking AMPTP put out there earlier Tuesday. The guild’s perspective reads much more that the AMPTP were trying to hype the whole thing and score some much needed PR points tonight than they were seeking an end to Hollywood’s ongoing production shutdown and labor strife.
“Instead, on the 113th day of the strike – and while SAG-AFTRA is walking the picket lines by our side – we were met with a lecture about how good their single and only counteroffer was,” the Ellen Stutzman, David Goodman and Chris Keyser-led Negotiating Committee says of the off-site sit-down with the CEOs and AMPTP chief. “But this wasn’t a meeting to make a deal. This was a meeting to get us to cave, which is why, not 20 minutes after we left the meeting, the AMPTP released its summary of their proposals,” they informed members, openly deriding the studios’ public relations move of earlier this evening.
“This was the companies’ plan from the beginning – not to bargain, but to jam us. It is their only strategy – to bet that we will turn on each other.”
Calling out the AMPTP’s August 11 proposal for its “limitations and loopholes and omissions,” the WGA isn’t interested in what it seems to say are the studios and streamers disingenuous offers of rincreased residuals, A.I,. controls, writers’ room standards, and transparency in metrics from the streamers. Offers the AMPTP claim “addresses all of the issues the Guild has identified as its highest priorities.”
Hollywood’s steaming summer of strikes looks ever further from over than just a few hours ago — and the end to this figurative and literal war of words may be nowhere in sight.
Read the full WGA email to its members here:
After 102 days of being on strike and of AMPTP silence, the companies began to bargain with us on August 11th, presenting us for the first time with a counteroffer.
We responded to their counter at the beginning of last week and engaged in further discussions throughout the week.
On Monday of this week, we received an invitation to meet with Bob Iger, Donna Langley, Ted Sarandos, David Zaslav, and Carol Lombardini. It was accompanied by a message that it was past time to end this strike and that the companies were finally ready to bargain a deal.
We accepted that invitation and, in good faith, met tonight, in hopes that the companies were serious about getting the industry back to work.
Instead, on the 113th day of the strike – and while SAG-AFTRA is walking the picket lines by our side – we were met with a lecture about how good their single and only counteroffer was.
We explained all the ways in which their counter’s limitations and loopholes and omissions failed to sufficiently protect writers from the existential threats that caused us to strike in the first place. We told them that a strike has a price, and that price is an answer to all – and not just some – of the problems they have created in the business.
But this wasn’t a meeting to make a deal. This was a meeting to get us to cave, which is why, not 20 minutes after we left the meeting, the AMPTP released its summary of their proposals.
This was the companies’ plan from the beginning – not to bargain, but to jam us. It is their only strategy – to bet that we will turn on each other.
Tomorrow we will send a more detailed description of the state of the negotiations. And we will see you all out on the picket lines so that the companies continue to see what labor power looks like.