The WGA’s Tentative Deal Gets Writers a Big Boost with Healthcare — and Sets the Tone for the Other Guilds

Now working under a four-year deal rather than three, the writers got some much-needed healthcare relief, along with added residuals and protections.

Clearly, this isn’t 2023.

On Saturday, the Writers Guild of America surprised the industry with a new tentative minimum bargaining agreement with the studios, or the AMPTP. And as of Wednesday, April 8, the guild has detailed its full MBA tentative deal with the studios that writers will work under for the next three… er, scratch that, four years!

That’s the first headline that jumped out to writers and to the industry: the writers, usually the harder-line group of the bunch and certainly the guild that set the tone early on in 2023, agreed to extend its contract term to four years rather than three, and it did so well before its May 30th deadline for the ’23 MBA.

The Writers Guild though desperately needed help with its healthcare and pension plans, to the point that it was running a deficit and would run out of funding in a matter of two years if it didn’t get a lot more help from management. That came in the form of $321 million in funding to the health and pension plan over the course of the contract, a huge boon that will help keep a lot of writers with healthcare even if it comes with some adjustments to the specifics of the insurance coverage.

“That’s really big money. It’s really needed with the contraction of the industry and people needing, health and also social services and things like that,” said Maria Rodriguez, partner with McDermott Will & Schulte. “I was very impressed. It said that the studios really valued the relationship, and they came to the table ready to really bring great terms for a new deal.”

A source familiar with the negotiations said the deal landed in a good place for both sides — writers came out ahead on the health plan and other priorities, and companies secured an extra year of labor stability. You might even call that a compromise.

WGA member Alexander Maggio, a writer on “Madam Secretary” and “FBI,” said he isn’t “doing backflips” over this deal, but he’s satisfied with the work of his guild’s negotiating committee and will be voting to ratify the contract when voting begins on April 16. He says he would’ve had a lot of questions had the guild agreed to a 5-year term, which IndieWire understands was originally floated by the AMPTP. But for a 4-year term, it’s a trade off he was willing to make in order to keep his healthcare.

“It’s a substantial change,” Maggio said. “I think it’s fair to say it makes me a little bit nervous about what changes might come up in the industry between now and the next set of negotiations. But again, I think to protect our healthcare, that was a reasonable compromise, and I think we can all live with it.”

The guild also touted raises to the minimum wages of 10.5 percent, better residuals, and even a bump to the bonus given to writers on the tippy-top performing streaming shows (it’s now 75 percent of the residual fee rather than 50 percent) that writers fought tooth and nail to secure in the last round of contract talks. Maggio said that for writers in development on shows, it’s also a big deal that writers can’t be locked into first position until they’re actually paid to start writing a pilot. It gives writers flexibility to explore other opportunities while waiting to win a pitch, he explained, and the writers didn’t sacrifice anything else they won last time.

“It reinforced the wins from 2023. The studios didn’t try to backtrack on any of the gains before,” Bryan Sullivan, a partner at Early Sullivan Wright Gizer & McRae LLP, told IndieWire. “It preserved the minimum staffing requirements and prohibitions on mini rooms and will further discourage free work from free rewrites and polishes that producers ask for and that writers should be paid for.” 

Where some writers may be let down is in reaching for added compensation for using a writer’s material as training data in AI models. That’s a tall order when it comes to IP that the studios already own just being used as training data for their own models, but the studios do have to notify the guild in the event they license material to a commercial generative AI model (looking at you Bob Iger and the now-defunct Sora).

So where does that leave things? Writers now have to actually ratify this deal, and it’s worth remembering that the WGA reached this agreement while staffers for the WGA West are still on strike against the guild for a labor contract of their own, an ongoing conflict that wound up cancelling the WGA West Awards ceremony last month. It wouldn’t be a surprise if support for WGA leadership’s deal won’t be as unanimous as it was in 2023, but with writers out of work for as long as they were in 2023, Sullivan believes there’s a desire to not rock the boat further.

As for the other above the line guilds, SAG-AFTRA and DGA, SAG-AFTRA will resume bargaining earlier than expected on April 27 now that things with the WGA are wrapped up. The DGA will then begin its bargaining under new guild president Christopher Nolan in May. Rodriguez says historically the WGA has always been the guild that sets the tone for other negotiations, even if SAG-AFTRA began its talks earlier this year. The first question then is if WGA’s deal puts pressure on either of those guilds to also agree to a 4-year term. Nolan told press earlier this year that he didn’t see a five-year extension as a “reasonable proposal.”

“If we had agreed to a five-year contract in March of 2020, where would we be now? We are living in an industry where things are shifting very, very fast in terms of how they choose to run their businesses, and there are no assurances they’d be able to give us on how that’s settling down or what that path would be,” the “Oppenheimer” director previously told Deadline.

And while the added AI compensation may have been a letdown for writers, it’s not apples to oranges when it comes to what SAG-AFTRA wants to see in terms of protections for actors. Its members are looking for effectively a “Tilly Norwood Tax,” an obligation from the studios that using a synthetic actor would be more expensive than opting to just hire a real one. That may still materialize even if the WGA didn’t make it a top ask.

What has materialized is that AMPTP president Greg Hessinger seems to be playing a different game at the bargaining table than his predecessor. The studios, at least through one negotiation, aren’t being as obfuscating and stonewalling as so many of these talks have gone in the past and are instead coming to the table immediately with close to their best offer.

Now it’s just a question if those offers are good enough.