The leadership of the Writers Guild of America (WGA) have called on its membership on both sides of the country to convene a meeting in New York and Los Angeles on Saturday, February 9.
The purpose of the get-together will be discussion about the new contract agreement that they have ironed out with the bargaining unit from the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers (AMPTP).
Before anything can be settled it must be reviewed and accepted as palatable to the WGA rank-and-file.
The details of the contract will be discussed in full, allowing Guild members to ask questions, offer up opinions and so forth. It will also allow the leadership to gauge its members responsiveness to the proposal to see if it is passable with its 12,000 members.
If the writers give the thumbs-up during these two meetings, most observers feel ratification of the new contract could happen very quickly and everyone could be back to work as early as this coming Monday in most cases, but could take as much as several weeks for others. The writers have been walking the picket-lines for over 3 months and are themselves eager to return to work but only with a reliable, compensatory, fair and workable contract with studio and network bosses. The strike has virtually shut down all scripted entertainment industry production. A resolution now would also allow the Academy Award ceremony to commence without a pale of gloom over it as occurred during the Golden Globes Awards.
Not all is bright and shiny however and some of the rumored parts of the proposal still have many of the striking writers upset and could remain a sticking point if they can’t be brought on-board to ratify the agreement. Since all the negotiations between the WGA and AMPTP over the last couple of weeks have been done with a news blackout we can only speculate that some Guild members are still not happy with the deal being offered that covers Internet, new media and DVD compensation.
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