This is the letter that was just sent to the membership:

AMPTP BREAKS OFF NEGOTIATIONS

Today, after three days of discussions, the AMPTP came back to us with a proposal that included a total rejection of our proposal on Internet streaming of December 3.

They are holding to their offer of a $250 fixed residual for unlimited one year streaming after a six-week window of free use. They still insist on the DVD rate for Internet downloads.

They refuse to cover original material made for new media.

(Breaking news from the WGA - the AMPTP has agreed to come back to the table on November 26th. Now, let's hope they are prepared to make a fair deal. This is progress. Everyone wants to go back to work. Everyone wants fair compensation for their work.)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

November 16, 2007

This media advisory was just sent out by the WGA:

The Writers Guild of America will hold a press conference today, Sunday, Feb. 10, 12 Noon PST, at WGAW headquarters to update the media on important developments related to contract negotiations between the WGA and the AMPTP companies.

Scheduled to appear: WGAW President Patric M. Verrone, WGAE President Michael Winship (available via phone line

Patric Verrone and Michael Winship just sent this message to the membership. The WGA is determined to stay at the table until we have a deal. If the AMPTP wants to negotiate in good faith, and end the strike, we are at the table.

Dear Fellow Members,

Before we head into negotiations this morning, we want to give you an update on where we stand.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

February 26, 2008

Writers Guild Members Overwhelmingly Ratify New Contract

This was sent out today by the WGA:

LOS ANGELES and NEW YORK – The membership of the Writers Guild of America, West (WGAW) and the Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE) today voted overwhelmingly in favor of lifting the restraining order and ending their 100-day strike that began on Nov. 5. 3,775 writers turned out in Los Angeles and New York to cast ballots or fax in proxies, with 92.5% voting

This was released by the WGA today:

WRITERS GUILDS REACH INTERIM AGREEMENTS WITH
INTERMEDIA AND THE FILM DEPARTMENT

Los Angeles – The Writers Guild of America, West and the Writers Guild of America, East are pleased to announce they have reached interim agreements with The Film Department and Intermedia. The Guilds continue to sign agreements with companies that value the essential role writers

The Writers Guild of America, West (WGAW) issued the following statement regarding the Golden Globe Awards today. So despite rumors to the contrary, it certainly does look like the Globes will be held behind a picket line.
Personally, I am still voting for the black tie pickets, and coverage on the Internet of anyone who choses to join us. Of course, since the Internet is so new-fangled and

To My Fellow Members,

This afternoon, the Directors Guild announced that it would commence formal negotiations with the AMPTP tomorrow. In a joint press release with the Screen Actors Guild, the Writers Guilds, West and East, wished the DGA well and offered our hope that they achieve a fair deal that incorporates principles that will benefits all creative artists. We further stated that, while

The California Democratic Party is officially on record as supporting the WGA's strike action. Stating in their resolution:

WHEREAS, the Association of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) has refused to recognize the legitimate claims of the approximately 12,000 members of the Writers Guild of America (WGA) to fair remuneration through residuals on the distribution of its members’ creative endeavors on any current distribution platforms and those yet to be developed, including the monitoring and enforcement thereof; and

United Hollywood has secretly obtained a transcript of one of the earlier negotiating sessions which illustrates just what the writers are facing at the bargaining table...

WGA: We'd like a whopping four pennies more on each DVD sold.
AMPTP: We're going to punch you in the face and take your dog.
WGA: We'd like to be compensated for our work that's distributed over the Internet.
AMPTP: We're going to punch you in the face and take your dog.
WGA: We don't think it's fair you're trying to have short-form content written non-guild.
AMPTP: Fine. We won't take your dog. That's off the table. After you shout from the rooftops and thank us, which proposal are you going to take off the table?

We're told that the long strike of 1988 had two far-reaching consequences: the audience discovered cable and reality shows grew in popularity.

What will be the legacy of the 2007 strike?

Hard to say. The negotiations are still ongoing. But one fact is abundantly clear even at this point.

Writers love the internet.

Given that the AMPTP was trying to control the internet, there is something ironic about the way writers have taken to the web as the place to try out ideas or vent or be funny about issues that can seem simultaneously enraging and arcane, like the DVD formula with its string of percentages: 1.5% (or 1.8%) of 20% of the studio’s gross on DVD sales.

By various accounts, after only a few weeks, striking writers and their supporters have put between 750 and 1,000 videos on YouTube.

Michael Winship, president of Writers Guild of America East, sent this message to East members today.

Fellow Members of the Writers Guild of America, East:

A very Happy New Year to you all. In spite of our current turmoil, I hope you’ve been able to find some time to enjoy and appreciate the holiday season with friends and loved ones.

I hit the wall the Friday before Christmas, momentarily

(WGAw President Patric M. Verrone released the following statement a short time ago)

December 13, 2007

To My Fellow Members:

The AMPTP and each of its member companies have a legal obligation to bargain in good faith with the WGA. Their unilateral walkout from negotiations last Friday and their on-going refusal to bargain is illegal under the National Labor Relations Act. Therefore the WGA today filed Unfair Labor Practice charges against the AMPTP with the National Labor Relations Board.

The DGA’s announcement today that it may begin negotiations with the AMPTP in January in no way relieves the AMPTP of their legal obligation to negotiate with us. The only legal way for the AMPTP to remedy the Unfair Labor Practice charge we have filed is to return to the bargaining table.

Ok, so we've finally got some answers from our sources. We'll have more as the day goes on, but here's the beginning of it:

Why aren't the writers still in the room negotiating? Why are we waiting until Tuesday to continue?

When they presented their proposal, the companies said it was incomplete. The Negotiation Committee still hasn't received the rest of the proposal, and they're waiting on the AMPTP to actually bring it. However, it's kinda hard to get excited about anything they may be bringing to the table, given the unimpressive track record they have so far.

December 16, 2007

Dear Writers Guild of America Members,

I am writing to you on behalf of 120,000 proud members of Screen Actors Guild who stand with you in solidarity as your strike continues. We believe that now more than ever, we must remain strong and even more committed to achieving our common objectives. We are proud to walk shoulder-to-shoulder with you and SAG will be there for as long as it takes.

Your fight is our fight. Our National Executive Director Doug Allen and I are working around the clock with Patric Verrone and David Young to coordinate our strike support efforts. I'm sure you have seen some of the thousands of Screen Actors Guild members who've been walking the picket lines in Los Angeles, New York and around the country for the last six weeks.

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.

UPDATED: We're bringing the post from yesterday to the top of the page -- but we also wanted to let you know what's on the agenda for today.

We'll be updating frequently throughout the day as we get some answers to questions we all have -- where are the congloms getting their numbers? What are they based on? What really happened in the negotiating meeting? Why, after insisting that there was no way to do flat payments on internet use, did the companies suddenly completely shift their paradigm and tell us that actually, no, it was percentages they aren't willing to discuss?

We'll also be able to clarify what the WGA negotiating committee proposal numbers are, and confirm the ugly fact that all this could have been over weeks ago for less than the budget of doing PR for one theatrical release or fall tv show. As in, a lot less.

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.

Writers Guild of America, West (WGAW) President Patric M. Verrone has issued the following statement in response to the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) statement that actors will not cross WGA picket lines to appear on the Golden Globe Awards as acceptors or presenters:

We are grateful to our brothers and sisters in SAG for their continued solidarity and support.

The entire awards show season is

This letter was submitted anonymously by a working reality writer. He/She requires anonymity, because otherwise, he/she fears being fired for writing this.

Dear AMPTP,

Today, I read on your website, “thousands of people in reality and animation have chosen not to join the WGA.”
This statement is false.

As a writer (aka "Supervising Producer", the name I'm given to get around having to give me a WGA contract) who has worked in reality television for over three years and who knows many people on the reality circuit, I can tell you that reality writers desperately want to be part of the WGA.

(News Release from the Writers Guild of America)

Hundreds of Screen Actors Guild Members Join Picket Lines Outside Universal Studios

on Day Nine of WGA Strike

To Our Fellow Members:

Yesterday, the WGAW and WGAE presented to the AMPTP a response to its proposal on streaming television programs.

We accepted the framework in their proposal of last Thursday for a fixed residual in the first year.

But rather than basing the residual for the entire first year on a small percentage of the applicable minimum, we proposed that the fixed residual be paid on a higher percentage of applicable minimum for each 100,000 streams per quarter.

This is a readily ascertainable number. In fact, the companies are already keeping records of streams for their advertisers. Both the advertisers and the companies are already using these numbers as the basis for their business model.

(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.

This is excerpted from the email that Warners strike captain Brian Hartt sent to other captains this week, with permission. Brian is an Emmy-nominated writer who coordinates all of the Warners picket teams, as well as being the showrunner on Mind of Mencia who helped get 4 West Coast and 2 East Coast shows on Comedy Central covered by the WGA contract . His tireless work and dedication are inspiring.

As I'm sure you all know, the AMPTP walked away from the table Friday.

You all should have, by now, gotten John Bowman's response to the "nice try" press release by the company's lap dog. Let me stress something that John mentioned - their press release came out minutes after they walked away.

(From WGA Member Ed Decter.)

I was walking the picket line with a young television writer who worked on THE UNIT. He was explaining to me that David Mamet always asks three things about a scene:

1. What does each character want?
2. Why now?
3. What happens if they don't get it?

Since I don't have an MBA, CPA, JD or any other degree my father wanted me to get, the only way I can look at our current labor situation is through the eyes of a screenwriter. If I was writing a screenplay, let's call it "The Big Strike of 2007," and the two main characters were the WGA and the AMPTP, before I would start writing I might ask myself the three Mamet questions. When thinking about the WGA "character" things seem very clear:

What does the WGA want?

The WGAW responded to the AMPTP today with the following statement:

Mr. Counter's charge is as offensive as it is untrue. To accuse the Writers Guild of America of blacklisting, when it was we who suffered the most from it in the past, is simply Mr. Counter's desperate attempt to divert attention from the fact that it was he who walked out of the negotiations, and it is he who refuses every day to return to the table. The WGA has an offer on the table and is ready and willing to meet with the AMPTP any day, anywhere.

The AMPTP walked away on Friday. The WGA never left the table.

The Guild has made itself crystal clear: Specific proposals have been detailed, compromises have been made, the leadership continues to be engaged in a constructive dialogue to quickly resolve the strike. The AMPTP is as clear about its position: You can't talk to writers because they're emotional and don't understand business.

With the AMPTP away from the table, the negotiation is playing out in the press. If you read Dave McNary in Variety today, there's only one answer to the impasse: the WGA has to accept the companies' demands and get back to work. The companies are too powerful, with their deep pockets and experienced PR resources. The writers' are too emotional, which is great when they're writing screenplays, but not good when you're engaged in a difficult labor negotiation.