American movie and television writers voted overwhelmingly
Tuesday to end their more than three-month strike against Hollywood
studios, TV networks and entertainment companies.
Writers are expected to return to work Wednesday, with new
programming expected in about a month, according to officials of
the writers' union.
"The strike is over," Writers' Guild of America-West (WGA)
President Patric Verrone said. "Our membership has voted and
writers can go back to work."
According to Verrone, 92.5 percent of the 3,775 members cast
ballots in Los Angeles and New York in favor of ending the 100-day
strike. The voting was held simultaneously at the Writers' Guild
Theater in Beverly Hills and the Crowne Plaza Hotel in
Manhattan.
The WGA board of directors over the weekend unanimously
recommended the approval of a draft contract between the union and
major studios and set Tuesday's membership vote. A ratification
vote on the agreement by the membership will be held in two
weeks.
"This was not a strike we wanted, but one we had to conduct in
order to win jurisdiction and establish appropriate residuals for
writing in new media and on the Internet," Verrone said through a
statement released Tuesday evening.
Under the pending three-year contract, residuals for movies and
TV shows sold online would be doubled, and the WGA would be given
jurisdiction over content created specifically for the Web, above
certain budget thresholds.
And like directors, writers would receive a 3.5 percent per year
increase in minimum pay rates for television and film work.
WGA members, who were previously not paid for content streamed
for free via the Internet, will get a fixed residual payment of
1,200 dollars a year for one-hour webcasts during the first two
years of the new contract.
In the third year, writers -- unlike Directors' Guild of America
members -- would get residuals equal to 2 percent of any revenue
taken in by the program's distributor.
WGA officials said that it was the failure of the Golden Globe
Awards last month that brought Hollywood studio chief executives
back to the bargaining tables.
The Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA), which hands out
the annual Golden Globe Awards, suffered mightily when the WGA
refused to grant the normally glitzy awards show a waiver. HFPA was
forced to settle for an hour-long news conference in which the
winners were announced.
Los Angeles city officials lauded the end of the strike, which
has cost striking writers themselves some 270 million dollars in
wages since it began on November 5, and cost other production
workers some 470 million dollars.
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(Xinhua News Agency February 13, 2008)
