Click here to see her post on the UH Union Blog.

(We want to welcome SAG Member Justine Bateman as a regular contributor to United Hollywood. We hope to continue opening the site up to more voices from SAG and other unions. Justine reminds us that this fight belongs to all of us. We're all on the same page.)

Attention all SAG Actors:

I believe it's appropriate at this time to call all actors into action in support of the Writer's Guild on strike.
I know many of us have been walking the picket lines and attending the rallies, but I want to challenge ALL SAG members to see if they can commit an HOUR-A-DAY to walking the picket lines.
The AMPTP has been jerking the Writer's Guild around.
1. They offered nothing but insulting Roll-Backs to the WGA in the negotiations that caused the strike.

This was just sent by WGA West President Patric Verrone to membership:

Dear Fellow Members,

I am are pleased to inform you that this morning the WGA Negotiating Committee unanimously and unconditionally recommended the terms of the proposed 2008 MBA to the WGAW Board and WGAE Council. The Board and Council then voted unanimously to recommend the contract, and to submit it to the joint

This was sent early this morning to membership. The delay in publishing the deal points, we've learned, was because the companies dragged their feet enshrining some of the final details in an attempt to renege on some of what they had promised. The last-minute fight to keep that from happening took until late last night.

To Our Fellow Members,

We have a tentative deal.

It is an agreement

And so are you.Photo by Justine Bateman. Hat by Strike Swag.(Proceeds from U.H. swag offset the cost of our upcoming redesign.)

This was sent out to members by the WGA today:

PRO AND CON MEMBER STATEMENTS
on Ratification of the Proposed 2008 MBA

Rules for Members of WGA East (WGAE) and WGA West (WGAW)

In keeping with our tradition of encouraging a free flow of ideas and opinions among the membership, the Current members in good standing have the opportunity to submit statements supporting or opposing ratification of

This letter was just sent out to SAG members by Doug Allen (Executive Director and Chief Negotiator) and Allen Rosenberg (President). Emphases in red are from us at UH -- LK.

Dear SAG Member:

Everyone hopes the WGA strike will end with a fair deal for the writers. There has been much speculation about the impact on the WGA strike of the tentative agreement between the Directors Guild of America

This was sent to membership Friday night, asking for patience as the WGA assesses the deal and moves foward with the AMPTP:

To Our Fellow Members,

As you know, the Directors Guild announced yesterday that it has reached a tentative agreement with the AMPTP. We are waiting for the full terms of the deal to be made available so that we can carefully analyze and evaluate the language and numbers.

This email was just sent to strike captains. It contains info on the NegCom vote, the Board and Council votes, the pending vote to lift the strike, and the pending vote to ratify the contract.

DEAR STRIKE CAPTAINS,

This morning, the WGA Negotiating Committee unanimously and unconditionally recommended the terms of the proposed 2008 MBA to the WGAW Board and WGAE Council. The Board and Council

WGA President Patric Verrone - who along with other members of the WGA Board and Negotiations Committee will be walking the various picket lines today - joins us for an interview on United Hollywood Live (12pm Pacific/3pm Eastern).

We also welcome actress Justine Bateman, who has spear-headed a SAG Call To Arms, and showrunner Bill Prady to the show.

The negotiating committee and the board came out to a full house at the Shrine Auditorium. They were met with a standing ovation. Standing ovations continued through the meeting as Verrone congratulated the membership on its efforts over the last three plus months. Bowman discussed what the nature of negotiations were like on the inside, where we started, and what we've gained. David Young went

Howard A. Rodman is a member of the WGA Board and founder of the Guild's independent film writers committee. Two films he wrote, SAVAGE GRACE and AUGUST, will have their US premieres at the Sundance Film Festival in January.

10. The AMPTP says that we're too crazy, too ideological, too amateurish to make a deal, and this lets us say, oh yeah?

9. The Networks That Are Not CBS will be hard put to

UPDATE 1/17/08: The "Simpsons" movie was not WGA covered. References to it being covered have been removed.
Melissa Jo Peltier, DGA and WGA Member, recently posted on a DGA board the following myths and truths about the WGA negotiations with the CEOs. She permitted us to excerpt it here. To see her entire post go here.

Myth #1) "The only sticking points with the WGA are reality and animation."

We've been hearing a lot of procedural questions in the last few days, so in an act of serious selflessness, we decided to do a little paging through the WGA Constitution so you don't have to.

Here are the questions we've been hearing most:

Can the Board lift the restraining order (meaning the strike) without a general vote of the membership?

Yes. In Article IX, Section 3b, it states that the

2008 MBA RATIFICATION — MEMBER INFORMATIONAL MEETING

All WGAW members who have questions about the tentative contract are encouraged to attend a special informational meeting where senior staff and elected officials will review the deal terms and address members’ questions and concerns. The meeting will take place on Thursday, February 21, 7 pm - 9 pm at Sportsman’s Lodge, 12825 Ventura Blvd,

"Speechless" continues to demonstrate the support of SAG talent in the WGA's fight for a fair contract. UH contributor Justine Bateman stars in the latest episode with her brother Jason.

All "Speechless" videos:
Hi-res/Brightcove
Lo-res/YouTube

(The following is a letter from the presidents.)

To Our Fellow Members:

Today, it is our pleasure to inform you that members of the Writers Guilds of America, East and West, have voted to ratify the MBA contract with 93.6% approval. With a total of 4,060 votes cast, the tally was 3,802 to 258. These numbers reaffirm the tremendous level of support and commitment our membership has continuously demonstrated over these last few crucial months.

We are also pleased to report that the trustees of our health fund voted yesterday to follow the recommendation in our strike settlement agreement to provide additional coverage and an extension of the earnings cycle for a full quarter (three months) to participants who would otherwise lose health coverage following an earnings cycle that included all or a portion of the strike period. Participants whose health coverage is paid for by points will only be charged points if they have ten or more points as of April 1, 2008.

The WGAw's general membership meeting will be held at the Shrine Auditoriumat at 7pm (NOT 6:30pm as we reported earlier) on Saturday night.

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As of Thursday afternoon, we are all still waiting on specific contract language. Lawyer and blogger Jonathan Handel has pulled together media reports of alleged WGA deal points on his Digital Media Law blog. But none of the rumors or media

This was submitted by Phil Alden Robinson, writer-director-producer, and member of both the WGA and the DGA.

While we anxiously await the results of the "informal talks", I've been doing some hard thinking about the DGA deal. There's quite a bit in there to be pleased with - deal points that should serve us well in the future, and that never would have been achieved without our strike. But there

This was sent today to WGA members from Presidents Verrone and Winship:

To Our Fellow Members:

On Tuesday, members of the Writers Guilds East and West voted by a 92.5% margin to lift the restraining order that was invoked on November 5th. The strike is over.

Writing can resume immediately. If you were employed when the strike began, you should plan to report to work on Wednesday. If you're not

The strike is over. The WGA contract has been ratified. SAG and AFTRA are now center stage and there is still a lot of work to do before the town gets back to normal. At this moment it's useful to look back at our own history. There are lessons to be learned about how the process can move forward even against what seems like overwhelming odds.

There are many who labored behind the scenes to support the writers' strike. At United Hollywood we worked with people who put their energy on the line but wanted to stay off the media's radar. Not content to just talk a good game, these are members and supporters who knew that if they wanted to make a difference, they had to work at it.

One group in particular came of age during the early part of the strike: the writer-directors. Nicknamed the WD-40, forty writer-directors met to search for ways they could help facilitate the negotiation.

From the beginning of the strike, most journalists accepted the AMPTP's lead and described the DGA and WGA as antagonistic to one another. Nicholas Counter was frequently quoted in the trades as preferring the DGA as a negotiating partner. The writer-directors objected to that characterization and felt that the AMPTP was doing what it always did in positioning the Guilds against one another to diminish each union's power.

Former WGAw board member Michael Russnow has been covering the strike on his personal site and recently began blogging "The Writers Strike for Dummies" on the Huffington Post. In his most recent entry, Russnow discusses the importance of setting precedents for compensation on the Web. We believed the AMPTP when they cajoled us to accept the cable deal in 1981 with the understanding that when they

This was sent today to WGA members from Presidents Verrone and Winship. Emphasis is mine -- because I think it's incredibly important. --LK

To Our Fellow Members,

As Negotiating Committee Chair John Bowman wrote you last night, we are continuing to negotiate the terms of a tentative agreement with the AMPTP. We anticipate that we will be able to present the terms of that agreement to you in

(The piece below comes from a WGA member who would like to be known as "Red Sox Fan.")

The Ol' AMPTP Mindf*ck™

Has anyone noticed a pattern in the last couple weeks' worth of negotiations?

Monday is energetic and everyone's buoyed by the residual anger from the way last week ended. Tuesday there's a sense that they're "really talking." But by Wednesday, there's a creeping sense that nothing good is actually happening.

And on Thursday, the companies do the AMPTP Mindf*ck™.

First, it was the New Economic Partnership. This week it's "we're going to take our marbles and go home. Which means you can't play because we own all the marbles."

Statement from Chief Negotiator David Young and the WGA Negotiating Committee.

We have attempted to negotiate with the AMPTP companies since July. First they ignored our opening proposals. Then they told us we had to choose between their two horrible proposals. Then we removed DVDs from the table. Their response was to walk out of negotiations and tell the press that we were the ones who walked. Last week they presented us with another set of ultimatums. They didn’t even wait for a reply but broke off negotiations and walked out again.

There is a strategy at work here.

In any negotiation there are bottom line goals and “fringe” goals. The AMPTP wants to make the WGA reduce our demands to the bottom line so we’ll negotiate down from an acceptable deal to a bad deal If we do this, as we did with DVDs, you can be sure they would not hand us the deal we want. They would simply try to further wear us down.

This was submitted by John Jabaley, UH contributor, location manager, and member of Teamster Local 399.

On one side of the table is me, all of 25 years old and determined to get a good deal for my employers. On the other side is a man who owns several properties that the show I’m managing wants to use. A private alley. A closed bank. A hallway leading to the fire escape over the alley. And the

The WGA just sent out an official email listing a few local businesses that support the strike. We captains have been encouraged to approach businesses in our neighborhoods, tell them what is going on, and ask for their help.

I'd like to expand upon the idea though: If you are a business owner who wants to offer discounts to striking writers, please consider offering discounts to IATSE members and Teamsters who may have been thrown out of work by the conglomerates' refusal to offer a fair deal. We're all in this together.

- Silverlake Yoga is offering a 20% discount to WGA members while the strike lasts.

The following letter was written by Carlton Cuse and sent today to members of the WGA. His candor and honesty are deeply appreciated by all of us here at UH. The AMPTP is counting on us becoming more divided as time goes on. But we believe the opposite will happen -- is happening, right now. We are staying strong.

To my fellow WGA Members,

I want to clear up any misunderstanding about where I stand.

On November 16 I, regretably, was quoted by a Wall Street Journal reporter saying I was going to perform some of my non-writing, post-production duties on episodes of LOST to protect the show for the fans. However, I'm sure to the delight of the AMPTP, my statement became the story and gave the false impression that there was disunity among showrunners over the issues of this negotiation.