AMPTP’s Offer To ‘Discuss Negotiations’ With the WGA Was a Sham From the Start

Last week, we learned that the AMPTP, the negotiating body for Hollywood studios, reached out to the WGA requesting a meeting to “discuss negotiations.” That meeting happened on Friday, and as I feared when I wrote my initial piece, it was all talk leading to no action.

The WGA released a statement to its membership via email and their strike website about not only what transpired at the meeting, but about the games the AMPTP was playing in the lead-up to the meeting.

When AMPTP president, Carol Lombardini, reached out to the WGA, she called the meeting being requested a “confidential sidebar” to talk about negotiations and stressed the importance of “press blackouts.” Meaning that neither side would talk to the press about what’s happening behind closed doors.

However, things took a turn after their meeting. The WGA Negotiating Committee said:

“Our intention after the confidential meeting was to send a simple email to you all letting you know we would get back to you when there was more specific information about resuming negotiations. 

However, before the negotiating committee even had a chance to meet, our communications department began hearing from the trades asking for comments on studio-leaked rumors of the contents of the confidential meeting. This is after the AMPTP spent much of the meeting emphasizing the need for a press blackout. 

Since the studios are leaking to the press we need to let you know what was said in the meeting.” 

As we’ve seen before, the entertainment industry trade sites are beholden to the studios and it often shows in their reporting. So, here is what the WGA says went down in that meeting:

• Lombardini informed them that the deal the AMPTP struck with the Directors Guild of America (DGA) would be their template
• The AMPTP is willing to increase their offer on a few TV writer-specific minimums, as well as talk about AI (again, talk, not “do anything concrete about”), but…
• They’re not willing to discuss the preservation of the writers’ room (the WGA is fighting against the “mini-rooms” that have become prevalent in the age of streaming), or success-based residuals for writers.
• The AMPTP didn’t show a willingness to even discuss issues related to feature film writers or many of the other proposals that remain on the WGA’s list.

WGA Chief Negotiator Ellen Stutzman asserted that if negotiations are to proceed, the AMPTP needs to at least be willing to engage on all of the issues being brought to them by the Writers Guild.

In addition, since the AMPTP has allowed the strike to go on while also engaging in shady behavior in an attempt to continue business as usual, new issues have arisen during the strike that now need to be addressed:

“[I]ncluding a health care benefit extension and additional plan funding, reinstatement of striking writers, and arbitration of disputes arising during the strike. We will also seek the right for individual WGA members to honor other unions’ picket lines as they have honored ours during this strike.”

Lombardini reportedly repeated “People just want to get back to work” three times during the meeting. As if the AMPTP member companies have stopped working (or stopped making money). As if WGA writers are not also people who “want to get back to work.” As if SAG-AFTRA’s actors, also currently on strike, are not people who “want to get back to work.” The AMPTP continues trying to play unions against each other, referring to members of non-striking unions as “people” while treating the unions on strike as if they are obstacles to progress.

Meanwhile, Stutzman assured the WGA membership that, while the Negotiating Committee “remains willing to engage with the companies and resume negotiations in good faith to make a fair deal for all writers,” they “[do] not intend to leave anyone behind, or make merely an incremental deal to conclude this strike.”

(featured image: Amanda Edwards/Getty Images)