With 115 Writers Guild of America staffers still on strike after months of contract talks with the writers’ union led to no deal, the WGA West has cancelled its annual Writers Guild Awards.
Union president Michele Mulroney informed presenters scheduled to appear at the March 8 ceremony at the JW Marriott Hotel of the cancellation in a memo Sunday morning, with an “alternative celebration” for the Los Angeles-based winners and nominees set to be held at a later date.
This past Tuesday, the Writers Guild Staff Union revealed in an Instagram post that the guild had refused to bargain further on its first union contract and warned them that the awards ceremony would be cancelled if the WGSU did not agree to the previous contract offer by Friday.
“Make no mistake: This is an attempt by WGAW management to drive a wedge between union staff and WGA membership when we should be building unity ahead of (studio negotiations),” WGSU said in the post.
115 WGAW staffers unionized in April 2025 with the Pacific Northwest Staffers Union (PNWSU), seeking its first union contract with WGAW by the end of that year. Instead, WGSU went on strike on February 17, accusing WGAW of “surface-level bargaining” and unfair labor practices, filing a formal complaint to the National Labor Relations Board on the latter.
Among the issues the WGSU is looking to address in the contract is protections against the use of artificial intelligence software to surveil employees and monitor performance. They are also seeking a standardized system of just cause protections, including due process through arbitration.
The staffers are also calling for union scale wage with larger annual increases than what writers receive in their contract with Hollywood studios, something that the WGSU said is necessary because unlike writers, they do not have agents to negotiate over-scale pay.
This past Tuesday, dozens of WGA members joined the WGSU in solidarity on the picket line at the WGAW headquarters on Fairfax, with an estimated 120 people taking part between the two sides. WGAW captains at the picket line told TheWrap that the 2023 writers’ strike had built close relationships between union members and the staffers who helped oversee the logistics of the work stoppage.
“We would not have survived the 2023 strike without the staffers. They were the first to show up on the picket lines before any writers showed up and they were the last to leave at the end of the day,” said Jackie Penn, vice chair of the WGAW Committee for Black Writers.
The Writers Guild of America East will continue its own awards ceremony in New York, where this year’s winners will be announced. The WGA East, which operates largely independently of the WGA West save for key exceptions like studio contract talks, has a longtime union contract with its staffers, are not on strike.
Among this year’s nominees are Paul Thomas Anderson for “One Battle After Another,” Ryan Coogler for “Sinners,” Chloe Zhao for “Hamnet” and Ronald Bronstein and Josh Safdie for “Marty Supreme.”
In the TV category, writers for “The Pitt,” “Andor,” “The Studio,” and “Pluribus” were among this year’s nominees.
The WGA is tentatively scheduled to begin its contract negotiations with the studios via the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers on March 16. WGAW has told members that the WGSU strike will not directly affect those negotiations, though membership meetings to provide input to the guild’s negotiating committee ahead of those talks have been cancelled due to the walkout.
