The leadership of the Writers Guild of America has announced that the strike will end at 12:01 AM tonight Pacific Time…which is actually tomorrow morning.
In the past, strikes didn't end until the membership had voted to accept the contract but the way it's done now (I guess) is that we go back to work while we vote and if by some chance the membership votes to reject the deal — which won't happen — then we go on strike again. Or something. I'm not entirely certain how that would work but like I said, it won't happen. Voting will be October 2nd through October 9th and I'll go out on a shaky limb here and predict 94% acceptance.
Here is the deal. Here is a comparison of what we asked for and what we got. I gave both a quick read and this is by no means a serious analysis but it reads like a damn good deal. It's certainly an improvement on the final offer we got back on May 1. I would like to hear what people with legal training and more business acumen than I have think of it. I can already hear some people yelling "It's not good enough" but we hear that on every contract, especially from those who wouldn't be losing anything if we stayed out a few more months.
I'll also be interested to hear how our new terms could benefit SAG-AFTRA in their negotiations, which I presume will be resuming shortly. On some level, this kind of thing is like parents with a lot of kids: If you give one child a bicycle, you have to give every child a bicycle. But studio lawyers are sometimes very crafty at giving one union a gain in terms that don't easily translate to another union. I hope they haven't managed to do that in this instance and that our gains become actors' gains.