The Hollywood Writers Guild (WGA), on strike since early May, supported this Thursday the decision of the American Actors Guild (SAG-AFTRA) to join the strikes against the major film studios and broadcast platforms. “streaming”.
“We stand with SAG-AFTRA as they go on strike. The last time our unions walked out at the same time we got historic improvements like a pension fund and health insurance. This fight will be no less transformative,” they tweeted from the WGA account. barely an hour after the actors’ strike was confirmed.
In addition, the scriptwriters also published on social networks a video recorded from one of the pickets at the doors of the Netflix headquarters in Los Angeles with various banners that showed signs of solidarity with SAG-AFTRA.
“Let’s stay strong and united”, could be read on the posters. Some images that have also been repeated later in other manifestations of the writers in well-known enclaves of the City of Stars such as its famous Sunset Boulevard.
In the last few hours Hollywood scriptwriters had already shown their support with a statement released yesterday in which they called for a “fair contract” that respects the “indispensable role” of actors in the film and television industry.
“Hollywood must be a place where each worker is treated according to the value of their skills and talents. (…) It is a fight to prevent megacorporations from eroding the conditions for which we have fought for decades,” they assured then.
However, both unions were forced into the first simultaneous strike in 63 years after the collective agreement that bound SAG-AFTRA to the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) expired last midnight.
“We have had no other option (than to go on strike). We are the victims of greedy companies. We are in ‘shock’ with how the people we have lived with in this business have treated us,” said the president of SAG -AFTRA, Fran Drescher, at the press conference held this afternoon in which the strike was announced.
Actors and screenwriters agree in most of their demands to the big studios and platforms, demanding above all a regulation of the use of AI in the industry and an increase in residual rights, those economic compensations that they receive every time one of their works is reproduced again via “streaming”.