American actors and screenwriters Screen Actors Guild (SAG-AFTRA) and the Writers Guild (WGA) of the USA have been on strike for several weeks to force an improvement in their working conditions. The audiovisual industry is a sector that generates multimillion-dollar benefits but, in the last decade, has undergone serious transformations due to the rise of content in streaming and the unfair application of artificial intelligence.
After 95 days without news, this Friday the big studios will sit down again with the Writers Union to start negotiating. That is the claim, at least.
As reported The Hollywood Reporterthe location of a possible meeting between representatives of the WGA and the Alliance of Film and Television Producers (AMPTP), the group that negotiates on behalf of the main entertainment companies (Amazon, Apple, Disney, NBCUniversal, Netflix, Paramount, Sony and Warner Bros. Discovery), nor the WGA have confirmed the exact date and time of the hypothetical meeting. If it becomes effective, it would be the first step in a long process, although it would constitute a remarkable advance.
The current one is about a historic strike in Hollywood, since both sectors joined in the protest after neither of them achieved renew their triennial collective agreements with the AMPTP. 93 days later in the case of the scriptwriters, and 20 in the case of the actors, they continue to wait for their demands to be accepted and for the negotiations to be satisfactory.
The WGA claims approximately $600 million in salary increases and other benefits, such as residualsthe compensation that a team member receives each time their product is broadcast on television again and which, according to the union, have been diminished by on-demand content platforms.