Deadline.Com seems to think that negotiations re a new deal between the WGA and Alliance of Motion Picture and TV Producers are all but finished. Sure hope they’re right:
WGA & AMPTP “Very Close” To New Labor Deal
by Dominic Patten
Four days after returning to the negotiating table, the WGA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and TV Producers are near an agreement on a new three-year contract, I’ve learned. “We’re not there yet and there are still a few more I’s to dot and T’s to cross, but we’re very close,” one insider told me today. With many of the bulky points already coming together in the first two weeks of talks, the two sides spent some of their two-week temporary recess fine-tuning the agreement, sources on both sides say, before sitting down again at AMPTP’s Sherman Oaks HQ. An official announcement could come as early as the beginning of next week. If you take out the downtime, this year’s talks pretty much follow the timeline of the placid 2011 negotiations, which started on March 3 that year and were all done by March 20.
As widely expected, under pattern bargaining, the final deal this time round between the WGA and AMPTP will be similar to the agreement the DGA made with the studios and networks late last year with measured increases in minimums, residuals, pension and health contributions.