Saturday, February 9, 2008

Is That The Finish Line I See?

It came down to the last hour, but the deal language got resolved, and the WGA has reached a tentative agreement with the AMPTP.

The deal will be discussed in general assembly meetings in both NY and LA.

The board will decide tomorrow (Sunday) whether to lift the Strike or continue, based primarily on their belief that the deal will or will not be ratified by the Membership.

The deal points can be read here.

The biggest problem this contract faces is Hard-Liners' hatred of the 17-day promotional window for streaming reuse.  My guess is that, though truly hated, this provision will not be enough to derail the deal.

The argument will be "do we really want to strike for another 4 months just to get that down to 10 days?  Let SAG be the bad guys now -- see if they can get it."

Fingers are crossed.  This should be a deal good enough (especially with Verrone and Young's endorsement) to get the Strike lifted tomorrow.

Writers will be back to work on Monday.  Crews should be back days later.

3 comments:

dan said...

the bitch of it all is, and this illustrates just how little leverage the WGA has, and how mismanaged this strike was, there is NO favored nation clause.

Not quite true, allegedly there is one concerning new media, but nothing more. That means regardless of pattern bargaining, any thing sag, or IATSE negotiates on top of what's in this deal, outside of new media doesn't automatically go to the WGA. That includes wages, health insurance, residuals, etc.

Favored nation clauses, like the one in the new DGA deal are often used to counter act the no strike clause.

I hope they end the strike. It sounds like a deal they easily could have negotiated, with out fucking the entire industry for 4 months, but honestly? it's a crappy deal, if I was in their shoes, I'm not sure I'd take it.

Anonymous said...

Well I hear that the Shrine Auditorium was a love fest tonight and the mood was overwhelmingly postive for the deal. Now they will have the ratification vote within 48hours so it looks much better than I had hoped for ending the strike by Wednsday.

THIS IS GREAT NEWS!

Cheers All! - TranspoBill

Post Guy said...

Yes Transpobill, great news!

Despite the best efforts, I guess DHD didn't end up changing the writers perceptions of the deal. I am so happy to take DHD off my bookmarks.

And it is a good deal and will get better over time. I'm also happy to see that despite the generally unhappy remarks there and at UH, the quiet moderates far outnumbered the angry posters.

It does worry me a bit for June with Miss Batemans comments throughout this (didn't know she was on the SAG negcomm) but I guess I'll try to worry about that then.

Otherwise it's a great day!!