Agency Campaign Update - WME Dashboard Dashboard

Dear Members,

For the past few months, the Guild has been engaged in an ongoing and sometimes productive negotiation with WME in order to resolve their various conflicts and to provide them a path forward to signing the UTA/ICM Franchise Agreement. Four weeks ago, WME asked for contract language from us and, in return, the Guild repeated its prior request for additional information on their corporate structure in order to provide them with such language. They have been silent since.

Today, WME joined CAA in seeking to end the agency campaign, not by picking up negotiations where they left off a month ago—not by looking to resolve their own conflicted practices—but, instead, by once again asking the courts to deny the Guild’s basic right to represent its members in collective action.

That is not a way forward. As we said to CAA yesterday, the Guild and its members will not be bullied into giving up our right to fair and non-conflicted representation. If WME honestly believes that the way to win writers’ hearts is to threaten us with undermining the Guild itself, they do not know writers—twenty months in and they still do not know writers.

Like every other agency before them, WME (and CAA) will have the opportunity to get writers back when they return to the table—when they stop attacking us and take seriously the work of reforming their own deep-seated conflicts. Meritless court actions will not save them from that.

In Solidarity,

WGA Agency Negotiating Committee

Chris Keyser, Co-Chair
David Shore, Co-Chair
Meredith Stiehm, Co-Chair
Lucy Alibar
John August
Angelina Burnett
Zoanne Clack
Kate Erickson
Jonathan Fernandez
Travon Free
Ashley Gable
Deric A. Hughes
Chip Johannessen
Michael Schur
Tracey Scott Wilson
Betsy Thomas
Patric M. Verrone
Nicole Yorkin
David A. Goodman, President WGAW, ex-officio
Marjorie David, Vice President WGAW, ex-officio
Michele Mulroney, Secretary-Treasurer WGAW, ex-officio
Beau Willimon, President WGAE, ex-officio
Kathy McGee, Vice President WGAE, ex-officio
Bob Schneider, Secretary-Treasurer WGAE, ex-officio