On August 11, day 102 of the 11,500-person Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike, which has largely shut down the film industry coast to coast, aided by below-the-line workers respecting picket lines and bolstered by 160,000 members of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA), who initiated their own strike on July 14, the studios finally returned to the bargaining table.
The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), the organization that bargains on behalf of the major studios, offered counterproposals, a long-awaited response to the WGA’s proposals. The two sides met the following week and continued to exchange proposals.
Then, on August 22, day 113 of the WGA strike, the two sides met again, but with an important addition: previous negotiating sessions had been led by AMPTP president Carol Lombardini, the studios’ hired hand, while at this one, the bosses who make the decisions were in the room.
Disney CEO Bob Iger, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos, and NBCUniversal’s Donna Langley came to the table to face the WGA’s elected leadership in the room outside of the AMPTP’s Sherman Oaks, California, headquarters where the negotiations have taken place. Workers, suffering the devastating effects of a months-long strike, hoped that the studios might finally offer counterproposals that meet their needs. Instead, the bargaining session led to further unraveling.
“We accepted [the] invitation and, in good faith, met tonight, in hopes that the companies were serious about getting the industry back to work,” wrote the WGA negotiating committee in a message to members following the meeting. “Instead, on the 113th day of the strike — and while SAG-AFTRA is walking the picket lines by our side — we were met with a lecture about how good their single and only counteroffer was.”
The two sides had agreed to adhere to a media blackout, vowing not to leak information about the proposals to third parties. Yet immediately following the August 22 session, the AMPTP publicly released a document highlighting elements of their counterproposal.
“This was a meeting to get us to cave,” said the WGA leadership, “which is why, not twenty minutes after we left the meeting, the AMPTP released its summary of their proposals.”
These sociopath CEOs are hearing it from shareholders, who want us to get back to work. The shareholders are making it clear that the psychopath CEOs can release the LESS THAN ONE PERCENT of their compensations to get us back to work.
So the sociopath CEOs put on a big show of coming back to bargain and work this out … and when the WGA sits down to bargain, these sociopath CEOs have the fucking nerve to just lecture the WGA about how great their absolute garbage offer is. The offer WGA rejected because it didn’t address any of the issues on the table.
These sociopath CEOs are the problem:
Disney CEO Bob Iger, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos, and NBCUniversal’s Donna Langley
These sociopath CEOs are greedy and entitled. That any one of them thought that lecturing WGA, then gaslighting members (in violation of not just the agreed upon media blackout, but likely in violation of labor law) would move us any closer to getting back to work tells you everything you need to know about who the problem is.
Fuck these scumbags, fuck their greed, and fuck their gaslighting.
