2008 Woodie Awards
WGA ends strike, Hollywood back into production
Sara Carr
Issue date: 2/19/08 Section: Arts & Society
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After three painstaking months of picketing, shows on hiatus and production stalls on film sets; the Writers Guild of America and Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers came to a three year tentative agreement last week.
On Feb. 12 the Writers Guild West President Patric Verrone announced in a press conference that members of the guild voted against continuing the strike after the new deal with producers favored many of the guilds demands.
Left to a vote polled from both the New York and Beverly Hills branches: 3,492 voted yes to the agreement with only 283 against. A staggering 92.5% of the 3,775 members who voted brought a more than welcome end to the strike to end all strikes, (or at least we can hope). This agreement still awaits the full approval of all the members of the WGA whose mail-in ratification votes are due to headquarters by Feb. 25.
These good tidings spring from a painful ordeal that started on Nov. 5 when the writers walked away from their laptops and headed for the streets with signs in hand. The whole course of the strike was a tumultuous fight with great heights of frantic activity towards the end (namely from Jan. 23 on) and the lowest of lows when the writers and the producers refused to speak after a fruitless talk on Dec. 7.
But the strike brought to the table a bounty of riches with the writers earning many of their demands.
Among the gains of the walkout include a 3-3.5% pay raise annually as well as piece of the internet download pie. For the first two years of the new media opportunity the writers will get a down payment of $1200. A sum that is set to increase in the third year of agreement, with the writers earning 2% of the earned grosses on internet downloads.
Although the writers came out of the situation with a smile, much of the Hollywood economy is in the red; that is, financially.
Los Angeles County suffered an estimated loss of $3.2 billion dollars by the end of the 100-day work stoppage, a devastating total for the city that thrives off the fuel of the entertainment business.
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