WGA Leaders Urge Members To Accept Tentative Studio Deal
Verrone, Winship: ‘Strike Has Been A Success’
By Linda Moss -- Multichannel News, 2/9/2008 2:32:00 AM
The Writers Guild of America, which has been on strike for three months, told its members early Saturday morning that it had reached a tentative deal with Hollywood studios -- and urged its membership to accept it.
“It is an agreement that protects a future in which the Internet becomes the primary means of both content creation and delivery,” WGA East president Michael Winship and WGA West president Patric Verrone wrote in an e-mail to members. “It creates formulas for revenue-based residuals in new media, provides access to deals and financial data to help us evaluate and enforce those formulas, and establishes the principle that, ‘When they get paid, we get paid.’”
The WGA, which struck its proposed deal with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, will talk about the contract’s terms at meetings with its rank and file members today at 2 p.m. (ET) in New York City and 7 p.m. (PT) in Los Angeles.
“At those meetings we will also discuss how we will proceed regarding ratification of this agreement and lifting the restraining order that ends the strike,” the WGA presidents said.
The WGA laid out in detail over four pages the terms of the tentative contract and in its e-mail made reference to the issue that was the key sticking point since before the strike began Nov. 5: residuals for content that is used on new-media platforms, such as the Internet and cell phones.
“Less than six months ago, the AMPTP wanted to enact profit-based residuals, defer all Internet compensation in favor of a study, forever eliminate ‘distributor's gross’ valuations, and enforce 39 pages of rollbacks to compensation, pension and health benefits, reacquisition, and separated rights,” Winship and Verrone said.
“Today, thanks to three months of physical resolve, determination, and perseverance, we have a contract that includes WGA jurisdiction and separated rights in new media, residuals for Internet r
euse, enforcement and auditing tools, expansion of fair market value and distributor's gross language, improvements to other traditional elements of the MBA, and no rollbacks,” they told members.
The WGA leaders warned its members about the perils of rejecting the deal and going back to the picket lines.
“Over these three difficult months, we shut down production of nearly all scripted content in TV and film and had a serious impact on the business of our employers in ways they did not expect and were hard pressed to deflect,” Winship and Verrone said. “Nevertheless, an ongoing struggle against seven, multinational media conglomerates, no matter how successful, is exhausting, taking an enormous personal toll on our members and countless others,” they said in their e-mail. “As such, we believe that continuing to strike now will not bring sufficient gains to outweigh the potential risks and that the time has come to accept this contract and settle the strike.”
In closing, Winship and Verrone said, “Much has been achieved, and while this agreement is neither perfect nor perhaps all that we deserve for the countless hours of hard work and sacrifice, our strike has been a success.”
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