Hollywood, California —(Map)
On Sunday, the Writers Guild of America (WGA) reached a deal with Hollywood’s top studios that has ended a 5-month strike by union writers. The strike, which has led to a major slowdown in the entertainment business, officially ended at 12:01 Wednesday morning.
The WGA is a group that represents around 11,500 people who write scripts for TV and movies in the US. In early May, the group called for its first strike in 15 years. The WGA wanted to put pressure on Hollywood studios – the companies that make TV shows and movies* – to improve conditions for writers.
The strike lasted 148 days. That’s Hollywood’s longest strike in about 70 years. The strike has hurt the TV and movie business, which has been unable to make new shows without writers.
(Source: ufcw770 [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons.)
Over the last months, the WGA and the studios have talked from time to time, without making much progress. But on Sunday, after five days of hard talks, the WGA and the studios reached a deal that is expected to last for three years.
The WGA’s main complaint was that writers weren’t getting fairly paid for their work. The main reason for that is that streaming services have completely changed the TV and movie business.
In the past, studios hired lots of people for long periods of time to write scripts for TV shows. The writers were paid for their work, and paid again when the TV shows were shown again.
Now, with streaming services, new shows with short seasons come out all the time. Studios were hiring fewer writers for shorter periods of time. And writers weren’t usually paid when shows were replayed. Many TV and movie writers weren’t making enough money to live on.
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Details of the deal haven’t been made public, but the WGA says it is happy with the new deal. People speaking for the WGA say the deal meets many of their goals, and will help protect writers in the future.
The WGA wanted studios to promise to hire more writers for their shows, and pay them when the shows get replayed. They asked for better pay for writers when shows and movies are streamed. They also wanted to make sure that new Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools wouldn’t take work away from human writers.
Details of the deal haven’t been made public, but the WGA says it is happy with the new deal. People speaking for the WGA say the deal meets many of their goals, and will help protect writers in the future.
The studios did not make a statement about the deal, but the strike has led to a major slowdown in Hollywood. The WGA deal solves one big problem for the studios, allowing writers to get back to work.
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The WGA was just one of two big strikes affecting Hollywood. The other strike is led by SAG-AFTRA, a union representing about 150,000 actors. The actors’ union strike began on July 14. It’s not clear when it might end. Above, a WGA sign supporting the actors’ strike.
The WGA’s leaders voted to accept the deal late yesterday, and the strike officially ended at one minute past midnight. The union’s members must still vote on the deal, but now they can return to work immediately.
Even so, the WGA was just one of two big strikes affecting Hollywood. The other strike is led by SAG-AFTRA, a union that represents about 150,000 actors. The actors’ union strike began on July 14. It’s not clear when that strike might end.
Did You Know…?
The strikes have affected all kinds of workers in the TV and movie business. California Governor Gavin Newsom says the Hollywood slowdown has already cost the state more than $5 billion.
* The studios are being represented by the AMPTP (Alliance of Motion Pictures and Television Producers).
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