The Writers Guild Staff Union, which has been on strike for the past six weeks against the Writers Guild of America West, has sent a new proposal for its first collective bargaining agreement to the guild, calling it a “strike-ending” offer.
The new proposal was released to the public by the union and was accompanied by an open letter to WGAW executive director Ellen Stutzman, urging Stutzman to either accept the proposal, to negotiate “lingering issues” based off of the proposal, or to agree to enter arbitration with a third party from the California State Mediation and Conciliation Service within the next 60 days. The two sides have met intermittently since the strike began on Feb. 17, most recently this past Tuesday.
“This bargaining cycle has been marked by a long, drawn-out process of management attempting to bargain away from, and actively resisting, both this membership’s priorities and the basic union standards found in most collective bargaining agreements,” the letter addressed to Stutzman reads. “Enough is enough. The time to enter a fair deal with your staff and reunite is now.”
After several weeks of picket lines in front of the WGA West’s Fairfax headquarters in Hollywood and the cancellation of the guild’s annual Writers Guild Awards ceremony, the WGSU has now moved their picket lines outside of the headquarters of SAG-AFTRA, where the WGA is currently in the midst of its own contract negotations with Hollywood studios and their representatives, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.
In the letter to Stutzman, the WGSU says that their proposal would resolve the four key issues they want addressed in the labor agreement, which are listed in their own words as:
- A measure of predictability in job transfer and promotion,
- Employment security with regard to layoff and recall,
- A legal no-strike clause that does not insist on a permissive subject of bargaining, and
- A union-standard wage and salary scale that provides regular and predictable pay progression.
The union says it is seeking a response from the WGA West by 11:59 PM PT on Monday. TheWrap has reached out to WGAW for comment and will update with any response.
