What Did the WGA Achieve in its Four-Year Contract With AMPTP?

On today’s episode of “Daily Variety” podcast, Variety’s Gene Maddaus details the Writers Guild of America’s four-year contract agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers that will be sent out to members for a ratification vote on April 16. This time around, the guild’s focus was all about shoring up its health care plan.

The guild will have to make some difficult adjustments to its plan, which has long been structured to allow for coverage for members who inevitably will have slow years when it comes to employment.

“The WGA has has long had the Cadillac of Cadillac plans. Zero premiums for the individual and then a very low $50 a month for a family. Obviously, that is going up,” Maddaus says. “It’s definitely a change for the worse and leaning on the basic realities of health care inflation. But the other huge one obviously has been the contraction [in the industry] and what that has done to the fund. And when you lose $200 million in four years out of your health fund, that is going to lead to a reckoning. And that’s where we are.”

The deal that members are set to vote on runs for a four-year term, which is longer than the three-year standard that has been the norm for decades. The WGA had to give this time around in order to secure a capital influx to the health plan, but don’t expect four years to become the new normal. It’s still a question as to whether SAG-AFTRA and the Directors Guild of America will also agree to four-year terms as those guilds handle their separate negotiations with the AMPTP in April and May, respectively.

“It was very much framed as an exchange [by the WGA]. We wanted to shore up the health plan. And so we got what we wanted and they got what they wanted,” Maddaus says. “Going forward, 2030 is going to come sooner than we think. The WGA is not interested in making four years the norm. They would love to treat three years as the default.”