Please Release Me

The flurry of union-related news releases continued today, and the principals involved are starting to resemble desperate retailers bombarding customers with 25-percent-off coupons.

This evening the AMPTP issued a rebuttal to the WGA's contention of Nov. 19 that studios have not paid the proper amount for new-media residuals. Also, SAG issued a news release responding to the AMPTP's ad that it placed in some newspapers today. It reiterated previous points: SAG deserves the right to negotiate its own deal on its own terms, and not be held to standards set by other unions, because actors' needs are different from writers, directors, and stagehands. (There is the little matter of AFTRA getting roughly the same deal, and it represents actors, but we digress.)

Why should actors care about a spat between the AMPTP and the WGA? The degree of the legitimacy of the WGA's claims will play a role (albeit a minor one) in the run-up to the guild seeking strike authorization. If both guilds can credibly claim that the AMPTP has not lived up to the new-media terms, SAG will be more effective in getting strike authorization.

The AMPTP's release, labled a fact sheet, stated that if the companies had been underpaying, it was only temporary while a new residual payment system was put in place. For example, for content streamed on the Web, "some studios have either made streaming payments to the WGA under the new formula, or are set to make those payments this week. The remaining studios are still working to program their residual systems to incorporate the new formulae. Some will process the payments manually in the meantime. Interest will be paid on any late payments"

The release also stated that the AMPTP had notified the WGA of the problem before the guild issued its release and filed for arbitration. 

A spokesman for the WGA did not immediately return calls seeking comment.

In its statement two weeks ago, the WGA contended that writers had been underpaid for the sale of permanent downloads, known as electronic sell-through. According to its reading of the contract, writers were owed residuals roughly double the home-video/DVD rate for movies released after 1971 and TV shows made after 1977. The alliance countered that writers were owed the higher rate only for content made after the date of the new deal: Feb. 13, 2008.

"The language at issue in the WGA agreement," the statement read, "is exactly the same language that was included in each of the Guild and Union contracts negotiated this year. No other Guild or Union has ever questioned the interpretation of the language. No one else has ever suggested that the language means anything other than what it clearly says."

The WGA filed for arbitration the day before SAG and the AMPTP were to meet with federal mediator Juan Carlos Gonzalez. It's difficult to measure what effect, if any, the writers' move had on that process, which ended without a deal and SAG moving ahead with a strike-authorization referendum. Neither side was particularly thrilled to have those two days of marathon negotiations, according to a source familiar with the talks, and were no less likely to end up as they did--with no resolution in sight.

As for arbitration, an alliance spokesman said the AMPTP has 10 business days to respond--Dec. 4--and no date for a hearing has been set.

--Andrew Salomon