This should be a time of positivity and celebration for the Writers Guild of America, whose members just ratified a deal that infuses $321 million into the union health plan over four years in what negotiators say amounts to a record amount of annual funding for the benefit.
Instead, things have gotten ugly in the world of the WGA West. On the heels of its contract ratification with studios, the WGA West is back to engaging in an increasingly tense conflict with its staff union, whose two-month strike in protest of alleged unfair labor practices shows no sign of stopping.
In a message sent to union members on Tuesday updating them on the status of first contract negotiations with the WGSU, a group of WGA West leaders leveled a number of serious accusations at members of the Writers Guild Staff Union (WGSU), backed by the Pacific Northwest Staff Union (PNWSU).
Union president Michele Mulroney, executive director Ellen Stutzman, vice president Travis Donnelly and secretary-treasurer Peter Murrieta detailed the “final offer” they gave to the staff union ahead of negotiations that night. The same email went into detail on how WGSU strikers have “acted in an aggressive manner completely out of line with how writers have always operated during WGA strikes.” The leaders alleged that WGSU members had called writers “scabs” as they sought to enter the building where they were negotiating their 2026 film and TV deal and followed writers leaving the building or waited for them at parking lots, “at times shouting epithets and abuse.”
The union leaders complained that their unionized staffers spread misinformation, called and texted WGA East and West negotiating committee members, “many of whom received fifty or more calls and texts per day, over multiple days,” and also reached out to WGA West board members. They accused staff members of picketing in front of executive director Stutzman’s home and “returning up to five times per day.”
Most seriously, the union leaders accused the WGSU and its supporters of some instances of physical intimidation. A PNWSU officer allegedly shoved the union’s outside counsel in an attempt to prevent him from entering negotiations and “some of the picketers hit Guild staff with picket signs.”
Claimed the WGA West, “Most of these actions are unprotected under federal labor law; some are illegal, and the attempted intimidation of the Guild’s executive director at her home is absolutely unacceptable.”
For their part, the WGSU disagreed with these characterizations, saying in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter that they “have engaged in protected concerted activity during a strike that has now gone into 11 weeks.” The union continued, “Our focus is and remains settling this contract.”
Certainly there is evidence that tension from the conflict has bubbled over. A video leaked to Variety in late March showed a team of WGA negotiators attempting to enter the building where bargaining with film and TV studios was taking place as picketers yelled “Shame!” and “Don’t cross the picket line!” Someone can be heard in the video yelling “fucking cowards!”
Meanwhile, on March 25 the WGSU alleged that a passerby attacked a group of picketers and threatened to “kill” one as a car full of WGA West managers looked on. “The managers inside the car did nothing,” the WGSU claimed.
Of course, the context of these latest allegations is meaningful, given that the WGA West made these remarks while communicating to members about its supposed final offer ahead of a negotiations session. This is typically a moment when the party with the ultimatum would want to apply maximum pressure to the other and convince outsiders that they’ve acted more than reasonably. The WGSU itself previously made a “strike-ending proposal to management,” as they called it, on March 26, just a day before the video of the tense picket was leaked to Variety.
Now, it’s just a question of which side, given that each is so dug in, will blink first. In its communication to members on Tuesday, the WGA West’s leadership exhibited some of the aggression and confidence that has previously made the union the bête noire of talent agencies and studios in struggles with them. In this case, though, rock meets hard place, as the union is engaging against some of the very staffers that supported its battle with talent agencies in the late 2010s and its 148-day strike in 2023.
If the conflict doesn’t abate soon, the WGSU has at least offered to bring an adult into the room. PNWSU president Brandon Tippy offered to work with California’s State Mediation and Conciliation Service, which can intercede in negotiations that are at an impasse, in an email to Stutzman and WGA West contract negotiator Sean Graham on April 23. But the WGA West has said it is not open to this kind of intervention given that it has already given a “final offer,” stating on a webpage devoted to the conflict, “Agreeing to mediation, would only give false hope that further movement is possible, or that there is some sort of middle ground, which is not the case, and could even prolong the strike.”
In the meantime, the drawn-out, increasingly bitter conflict doesn’t make either side look good. A lodestar of the labor movement is workers of all stripes showing solidarity with one another as they all seek better working conditions. There seems to be very little of that kind of values-driven behavior happening here.
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