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The
Writers' Guild of America (WGA) had walked off the job on May 2
after negotiations reached an impasse, and were later joined by
members of the Screen Actors Guild, halting productions across
Hollywood and costing the California economy billions of
dollars.
The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP),
which negotiates on behalf of companies including Walt Disney
and Netflix, changed its offer to include new details about
critical issues like compensation, minimum staffing, residual
payments and curbs on artificial intelligence.
According to the latest proposal, the WGA will get a compounded
13% pay increase over the three-year contract, and AI-generated
written content will not be considered "literary material".
The streaming platforms also offered to provide the WGA, which
represents around 11,500 film and television writers, with the
total number of hours viewed for each made-for-streaming show in
confidential quarterly reports.
"We have come to the table with an offer that meets the priority
concerns the writers have expressed. We are deeply committed to
ending the strike and are hopeful that the WGA will work toward
the same resolution," AMPTP President Carol Lombardini said in a
statement.
WGA received the counterproposal from AMPTP on Aug. 11 and on
Tuesday met with Walt Disney CEO Bob Iger, Warner Bros CEO David
Zaslav, NBCUniversal Studio Group Chair Donna Langley and
Netflix Co-CEO Ted Sarandos, to discuss the new offer.
"But this was not a meeting to make a deal. This was a meeting
to get us to cave," WGA said in a message to its members.
The union said it explained in the meeting why the offer fell
short and "failed to sufficiently protect writers from the
existential threats that caused us to strike in the first
place", but AMPTP released details of the proposal anyway.
WGA plans to continue picketing and said it would share with
members more details on the state of the negotiations.
"And we will see you all out on the picket lines and let the
companies continue to see what labor power looks like," it said.
(Reporting by Nilutpal Timsina in Bengaluru; Editing by Stephen
Coates and Devika Syamnath)
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