AMPTP: Strike Talks Collapsed As WGA Sought More ‘Power’
Studio Group Said Writers Wanted Control Over Reality, Animation Series Scribes
By Linda Haugsted & Linda Moss -- Multichannel News, 12/10/2007 9:21:00 AM
The talks to resolve the Writers Guild strike broke down over the union organizers' desire to “increase their own power and prestige” by expanding their jurisdiction over reality and animation series writers, according to assertions levied Monday evening by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.
The trade group issued a statement titled “Setting the Record Straight Version 2.0,” refuting comments made by executives of the Writers Guild of America to various media through the weekend and a letter that WGA East president Michael Winship sent out to his membership Monday morning.
The trade group for studios and independent producers emphasized that the AMPTP specifically stated repeatedly, as early as July 18, that jurisdiction over those animation and reality writers -- some of whom already have representation through another union -- would not be entertained in these contract discussions.
“These jurisdictional expansion efforts have very little to do with the concerns of the working writers who are strike,” the AMPTP said.
The AMPTP is also irked by statements by the Guilds' West president, Patric Verrone, who's been quoted as stating that the producers aren't really negotiating. The AMPTP noted Verrone wasn't even at the pivotal Dec. 7 bargaining session to negotiate,
“Instead, Mr. Verrone attended a rock concert and rally held to support the WGA’s still-unsuccessful attempt to organize reality television writers,” the AMPTP said.
The producers’ trade group added that its representatives wanted to begin negotiations in spring 2007, but content the WGA rejected that time frame.
And the studios charged that Winship, while present in Los Angeles last Friday for the crucial bargaining session, “never entered the negotiating room, where the negotiating committees from both sides met.”
In its laundry list of rebuttals to Winship’s letter Monday, the AMPTP said that it had never demanded that the WGA withdraw its DVD proposal as a pre-condition to making an offer on Internet residuals.
“In fact, the AMPTP’s actions proved otherwise, as the AMPTP presented the WGA with a wholly new TV streaming residual proposal before the WGA withdrew its proposal to double DVD residuals,” the studios said.
The AMPTP reiterated that its proposed Internet use compensation proposal comes with a three-year sunset. Given the changing nature of the medium, a pact could be renegotiated in three years and changed to reflect financial realities in 2010, the alliance said.
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