The official topics were the debt limit, energy policy and the end of federal covid-relief funding, but that’s not what many people wanted to talk about on C-SPAN’s morning call-in program this week. They wanted to complain about C-SPAN — specifically, about one of its board members, Allan Block, and his connection to a labor dispute at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, which was not exactly the stuff of national headlines. The calls were part of a coordinated campaign by a labor union, the NewsGuild, to call attention to Block, a C-SPAN board member for more than three decades, and his role in resisting a strike against the Post-Gazette, which his family-owned company publishes.
With just days to go, SAG-AFTRA is stepping up its efforts to prepare for going on strike even as contract negotiations with Hollywood’s major studios intensify. On Thursday, SAG-AFTRA distributed a survey to its 160,000 members and alerted them that the union would be calling for volunteers to help make signs, work phone banks, distribute T-shirts and generally support a mobilization of pickets on the streets of Los Angeles, New York and selected other locations. The email message includes a survey of members’ availability to picket outside studio gates, New York offices and other key locations. Thursday’s communication was the second part of the initial survey questions sent to members on Wednesday.
The Writer Guild of America said Wednesday that “we stand in solidarity with SAG-AFTRA as they bargain for a contract that truly works for all their members.” It’s the first comment the WGA has made on the SAG-AFTRA talks since the actors’ union last week extended its contract until July 12 to allow negotiations for a new film and TV contract to continue.
Members of the Directors Guild of America have overwhelmingly ratified a new film and television contract. The vote was 87% in favor to 13% opposed, with 6,728 members voting out of 16,321 eligible (41%). According to the guild, “The turnout level exceeded any prior DGA ratification vote.” Releasing the voting data is a break from DGA custom; in the past, the guild would only say that contracts were ratified “overwhelmingly.”
As of press time, we don’t know if or when SAG-AFTRA will go on strike should its deal with the AMPTP expire on June 30 without a new contract. But with the Writers Guild already on strike, and a SAG-AFTRA strike a distinct possibility, the TV Academy is already starting to mull several different contingency plans on how to adjust the rest of the campaign season calendar — and what to do with the telecast, currently scheduled for Sept. 18 on Fox.
Exclusives
The Directors Guild and the studios have reached a tentative agreement on a new three-year contract. The deal includes wage increases and “a 76% increase in foreign residuals for the largest platforms,” says the DGA. The pact, which also addresses AI, comes on the 33rd day of the Writers Guild strike, and just four days before SAG-AFTRA sits down at the bargaining table with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers – and two days before Monday’s 5 p.m. deadline for SAG-AFTRA members to vote for or against strike authorization. Like the directors, the actors’ guild current contract with the studios expires on June 30.
In an email to members Monday, the negotiating committee of the Writers Guild of America said nearly 98% of the 9,218 votes were cast to authorize the strike, with nearly 79% of guild members voting. The guild is currently negotiating with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers on a deal aimed at addressing pay and other changes brought on by the dominance of streaming services.
SAG-AFTRA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers have agreed to begin formal contract negotiations on June 7. The guild’s current contract expires June 30. In a joint statement, they said that they are “approaching this process as an opportunity to engage in thoughtful and interactive conversations that result in a mutually-beneficial deal.”
As streamers face mounting pressure to save money, several are dropping shows. Erasing original shows can help streamers get tax write-downs and, to a smaller extent, save on residual payments. But it brings criticism that they are sidelining already marginalized voices and shortchanging creatives. These issues have increased tension between executives and writers amid union contract negotiations that started in March and could lead to a significant work stoppage.
The Writers Guild is taking its first step toward a potential industry strike. The union has set a strike authorization vote, with online polls opening April 11 at 8:30 p.m. and closing April 17 at 12 p.m., the guild announced to members on Monday. While a strike authorization vote does not ensure a writers strike will occur, it does gauge members’ willingness to cease work if the union deems a strike necessary.
The guild, which is currently at the table with studios and streamers over this issue and others, said Wednesday that artificial intelligence “has no role in guild-covered work, nor in the chain of title in the intellectual property.”
Fox Television Stations and writers and producers for its WNYW New York have struck a new four-year contract, according to the Writers Guild of America East, which represents those employees.
The deep-pocketed pro golf upstart has a revenue-sharing arrangement with Nexstar CW and pays for all of its TV production expenses.
While a couple of powerful unions have fought hard against the Standard General-Tegna merger, the fate of which is currently in the hands of an administrative law judge (ALJ), one local chapter of the International Union of Operating Engineers is a big backer of the transaction. In a letter to the FCC, Edward Curly, business manager of Local 501 of the IOUE, representing workers in Southern California and Southern Nevada, said Standard General and managing partner Soo Kim have been big supporters of organized labor and he expects no less from the merged companies. Kim has also said the company has had good relationships with unions.
The Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers exchanged proposals on Monday, as they prepare for face-to-face bargaining next week. Last week, the guild membership voted 98.4% in favor of the “pattern of demands,” a high-level summary of the guild’s top issues for a new basic agreement. The items include addressing “the abuses of mini-rooms” and increasing streaming residuals, among a dozen other issues. The proposals are far more detailed, and are not expected to be made public so as to preserve the confidentiality of negotiations.
Various unions that opposed the Standard General-Tegna merger have told the FCC that it should not review a Media Bureau decision to refer the deal to an administrative law judge over FCC questions about the deal’s impact on retransmission consent and localism. That came in a petition filed Thursday by NABET-CWA and The News Guild, which oppose the merger.
The post-production editors behind Saturday Night Live are ready to strike and have set a deadline of April 1. Barring an agreement with producer NBCUniversal, the 12 to 20 editing crew members have announced that they intend to halt work and disrupt the show should bargaining sessions in their bid for pay inequities and health benefits continue to stall.
The Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers have settled on March 20 to begin negotiations on a new master TV and film contract. The clock is already ticking and strike fears are growing. The WGA’s current contract expires May 1. Just about everybody agrees that the compensation standards for writers — as well as actors and directors, whose unions will also hold contract talks this year — have been outmoded by the streaming revolution. The hard part will be reaching a compromise on how to adapt them.
The Writers Guild of America will begin negotiations on a new contract on March 20, as the industry holds its breath in anticipation of a possible strike. The current three-year agreement is set to expire on May 1. The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers announced the date of the talks, making the WGA the first of the three above-the-line guilds to enter bargaining.
Hollywood’s unions and guilds are in talks with the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers to renew their COVID safety protocols, which expire Tuesday amid mounting pressure to end a mandate that gives employers the limited option to require vaccinations as a condition of employment.
Directors are warning this will be a tough year for labor talks as studios cut staff and productions.
SAG-AFTRA has been lobbying for a decade to curtail so-called “exclusivity” agreements, which block TV series regulars from taking other jobs while they are on hiatus. In the agreement approved by the union’s national board on Saturday, producers will be required to give TV actors a three-month window after each season in which they can take any job they want. That means that stars of shows may start appearing more often as guest stars — or even as regulars — on shows on other platforms and networks. The new agreement will apply to work under contracts entered into on or after Jan. 1.
Digital and streaming producers along with assignment editors at CBS-owned WCCO Minneapolis have voted unanimously to join SAG-AFTRA. The 15 employees started the talks with the union in January 2019. On-air WCCO employees and newsroom producers are already members of the union.
The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees is accusing the Association of Independent Commercial Producers of “union busting” and providing companies with a “license to blacklist” production department workers engaged in unionizing efforts. Last month, the union said that thousands of workers employed in TV commercial production departments had formed a new union called Stand with Production under IATSE’s umbrella.
SAG-AFTRA announced on Monday evening that it has reached a tentative agreement with the major studios on actor exclusivity periods, an issue that has become a top priority for the union in recent years. The issue affects actors on TV series, who can find themselves barred from working on other projects for many months or even years between TV seasons. The union has said that the issue has grown acute in the streaming era, with seasons getting shorter and with longer delays between seasons.
The Writers Guild of America said Thursday that an arbitrator ruled in its favor, resulting in writers receiving millions of dollars in unpaid residuals from Netflix films.
The on-air staffers long have been represented by the union, but they now are joined by 69 reporters, producers, editors, production assistants and others who not only report and produce the show but also create NewsHour’s expanding digital footprint and one-hour primetime documentaries. NewsHour Productions, which produces the show, has officially recognized the bargaining unit, of which more than 70% of the program’s workers signed on to a petition to unionize.
SAG-AFTRA members have given a big thumbs up to a new three-year network code agreement covering most daytime TV, award shows and mainstay such as Saturday Night Live, Jeopardy, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver and others. The new pact was approved by a 94.7% margin. SAG-AFTRA emphasized the financial gains in the deal as well as contract provisions increasing protections for performers around sexually explicit material.
The NewsGuild-CWA and and the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians (NABET)-CWA filed a petition to dismiss or deny the deal with the FCC on Wednesday (June 22), the deadline for such filings. They say the deal, which was approved by Tegna shareholders in May, and interrelated transactions — what they labeled an “unprecedented array of sequenced transactions and swaps” — are actually an attempt to “game the commission’s ownership and retransmission consent rules in ways that contravene the commission’s public interest standard.”
SAG-AFTRA’s national board has voted overwhelmingly (84.54% to 15.46%) to approve a tentative new agreement for its Network Television Code, which was recently negotiated with the major television broadcast networks and other producers. It will now be sent to SAG-AFTRA members for ratification.
