Actor Christine Baranski speaks during the SAG-AFTRA “Rock the City for a Fair Contract” rally in Times Square on Tuesday. Charles Sykes/Invision via Associated Press
The Writers Guild of America plans to meet with Hollywood studio representatives on Friday, the first time the two sides will come face-to-face at a bargaining table since early May when the union called a strike that now involves nearly every writer and actor in the industry.
The negotiating committee for the WGA announced it would resume talks with the studios in a brief email sent to union members on Tuesday night.
The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers – which represents major studios – “reached out to the WGA today and requested a meeting this Friday to discuss negotiations,” the email said. “We’ll be back in communication with you sometime after the meeting with further information.”
It’s been three months since thousands of unionized TV and film writers walked off their jobs over complaints about eroding earnings and worker protections and the encroachment of artificial intelligence technology into their jobs. The strike expanded dramatically in July when tens of thousands of performers in the Screen Actors Guild joined it and shut down nearly all remaining Hollywood productions.
It’s unclear what the studios plan to offer the WGA on Friday in hopes of breaking the impasse. They have not made a similar invitation to the actors union, although SAG-AFTRA Chief Negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland said the guild actors are “willing and able to return to the table at any time.”
“We remain committed to finding a path to mutually beneficial deals with both unions,” an AMPTP spokesman said in a statement.
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