After 100 days on the picket lines, the Writers Guild of America is finally back at the bargaining table with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. But SAG-AFTRA chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland says the studios haven’t yet extended an olive branch to the striking actors.
“While we at SAG-AFTRA are not in discussions with the AMPTP, they have not reached out to us, we’re happy that they’ve reached out to somebody and that they’ve started this process,” he told KNX In Depth’s Rob Archer and Charles Feldman. “Perhaps it gives some room for some cautious optimism that something, some movement can occur.”
The WGA warned in June that the AMPTP’s “divide and conquer” strategy, which ended the 2007-08 writers’ strike, wouldn’t work this time around. Months later, solidarity between the writers and actors appears strong as ever.
“My counterpart at the Writers Guild, Ellen Stutzman, and I talk on almost a daily basis,” Crabtree-Ireland said. “We are, you know, sharing information and working together because we're fighting the same fight.”
SAG-AFTRA announced Monday that, moving forward, they would exclude WGA-covered projects from their interim agreement, which allows independent productions to continue shooting if they agree to the terms the union offered to the AMPTP.
In short, this means that any scripts written by WGA members won’t move forward into production, even if the producers agree to the actors’ demands.
“The Writers Guild and SAG-AFTRA have slightly different strategies … and so we want to be very supportive of their strike strategy, just as they’ve been supportive of ours,” Crabtree-Ireland explained. “So after talking with them for a while, amongst our staff and our council and theirs, our negotiating committee concluded that what we should do is just make sure that any Writers Guild-covered projects don't receive interim agreements from us.”
Crabtree-Ireland estimated that only 15% to 20% of the projects that have applied for interim agreements were WGA-covered, so the “vast majority” of independent productions are still eligible.
Behind the scenes, Crabtree-Ireland says Mayor Karen Bass has been nudging studios to come back to the bargaining table. He also credits the mayor’s office for working to resolve a dispute regarding the sidewalks outside NBCUniversal, which were blocked by construction work on August 1 (shortly after the same studio’s tree-trimming scandal).
“The fact that the companies have come back to the table, I think, reflects a lot of feedback that the companies have received from a variety of sources, including officials like Mayor Bass that have encouraged them to really take this seriously,” Crabtree-Ireland said.
Bass told KNX News last week that she was “deeply concerned” about the economic impact of the Hollywood strikes.
“It really cannot go another hundred days,” she said. “You think about the entertainment industry and the rippling effect in our economy. There are obviously the people that are members of the WGA, or members of SAG-AFTRA, but there are thousands of ancillary businesses that are all impacted.”
But Crabtree-Ireland said that despite the financial concerns, he believes local businesses will continue to support the strikes.
“I believe they are on board with what we're fighting for, and they recognize this is not just a fight about, you know, the 1% fighting the 1/10 of a percent … These are issues that resonate with everyone, and I think they also know we're not gonna be out on strike one day longer than necessary to get a fair deal.”
A spokesperson for the AMPTP told KNX News, "We remain committed to finding a path to mutually beneficial deals with both unions."
The AMPTP hasn’t reached out to SAG-AFTRA to resume negotiations since their strike began on July 13.
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