Courtesy of Fabebk via Wikimedia Commons. The WGA has been on a 148 day strike, making it one of the longest strike’s in the union’s history.
By Eliška Jacob ’24
Copy Chief and A&E Editor
On Tuesday, Sept. 26, the Writers Guild of America reached a tentative deal with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, marking the conclusion of a 148-day strike that halted Hollywood media production, according to Forbes.
This is not the first time the WGA has been on strike for an extended period. In 1988, the WGA went on strike for 154 days – its longest strike to date – citing anger with producers after they demanded that writers “accept a sliding scale on residuals,” according to History.com. History.com defined residuals as “payment received when work is re-broadcast after its original airing.”
Writers, alongside the Screen Actors Guild - American Federation and Radio Artists and other individuals within Hollywood, have been on strike since May 2, 2023, effectively shutting down the production of major movies and shows set for premiere in theaters, on television and streaming platforms. The strike was borne out of frustration with the disappointing results of meetings with the AMPTP — meetings that occur every three years to negotiate a new contract with the WGA. Strikers then took to the picket lines to demand “higher pay and a stable pay structure, as well as fairer deals and contracts and provisions about artificial intelligence,” according to Today.
In the past decade, “median weekly writer-producer pay has declined 4 percent,” and when adjusted for inflation, that “decline is 23 percent,” according to a WGA report. Residuals, defined by Fortune as “long-term payments to those who worked on films and television shows, negotiated by unions, for reruns and other airings after the initial release,” have also been a point of concern, as streaming platforms pay fewer residuals than traditional broadcast television and cinema programming, according to the same WGA report. The rise of artificial intelligence within the past decade has posed a threat to writers and their work, as AI can write scripts, jokes and other types of prose for no price.
Throughout the strike, the 11,500 writers within the WGA fought against these injustices, and on Tuesday, this fight proved victorious. The WGA and the AMPTP settled on a contract that “includes pay increases, better benefits, protections against the studios’ use of artificial intelligence, guarantees for streaming compensation, longer-duration employment terms and other perks.” Minimum pay for writers is set for an immediate increase of 5%, again by 4% in May 2024, and then by an additional 3.5% in May 2025 according to CNN.
In an interview with Deadline, WGA West President Meredith Stiehm emphasized, “This strike was way too long, because the companies took so long to get serious. … I feel sad and pained that it took this long because when we got serious, we got it done in a reasonable amount of time. So much was wasted and lost by just not acting earlier.”
The strike’s conclusion emphasizes a hopeful future for old and new writers stepping foot into Hollywood. “[The writers] were as strong as they were on Day 1 [as] they were on Day 148, and that’s why we got it all,” Stiehm concluded.