The Hollywood Writer’s Guild has called for a strike after representatives from Hollywood studios revealed labour talks with film and television writers concluded with no deal on Monday (1 May).
This will be the first writers’ strike – and the first Hollywood strike of any kind – in 15 years.
The union, representing 11,500 writers of film, television and other entertainment forms, is set to go on strike on Tuesday (2 May).
Months of negotiations, primarily over writers’ pay for streaming shows, have still left a considerable distance between the Writers Guild of America – whose East and West versions are technically two unions that act as a unit in these talks – and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents Hollywood’s studios, streamers and production companies in negotiations.
The current contract expired on Monday.
As per reports, many people in the industry felt a strike was inevitable.
Writers, who voted overwhelmingly to authorise their leaders to call a strike, had already begun making signs for picket lines.
The last time a writers’ strike seemed imminent was in 2017, when a deal was reached hours after contracts expired.
Last year, an agreement was reached two days before the deadline to avert a strike that would have seen the participation of 60,000 Hollywood crew members.
In the past, writers have gone on strike for a total of six times.
The first came in 1960, a Writers Guild walkout that lasted nearly five months.
Strikes followed in 1973, 1981 and 1985. The longest work stoppage, lasting exactly five months, came in 1988.
The 2007-08 strike was resolved after three months. Among the main concessions the writers had then won were requirements that fledgling streaming shows would have to hire guild writers if their budgets were big enough. It was an early harbinger of nearly every entertainment labour fight in the years that followed.
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