When negotiators for the Directors Guild of America sat down with their counterparts from the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers last weekend to try to hammer out a new contract, there was more at stake than simply wresting the best possible deal from an employer.
For one thing, as part of an industry that is careening into a digital future of enormous promise but unknown shape, we needed an agreement that would point us in the right direction but not lock us into any particular route. For another, whatever agreement we reached would not only have to satisfy our own members but also encourage our writer and actor colleagues.
We went into the talks keenly aware of the painful drama that is playing out in the streets around us -- the 3-month-old writers strike that continues to cripple television and movie production and idle tens of thousands of workers, both within the industry and in related fields. Out of respect for the writers, we delayed our negotiations long past their traditional starting point. We were stirred by their concerns and their passion, but with so much at stake -- and the WGA and the AMPTP at an impasse -- we felt we had to act.
We were not interested in making a deal simply for the sake of making a deal. To the contrary, we made it clear to the companies before we even sat down at the table that there could be no contract unless it enshrined two fundamental principles that, in our view, are absolutely crucial to any employment and compensation agreement in this digital age. The first is that jurisdiction -- that all jobs be union jobs -- is essential. Without that proviso for new-media production, compensation formulas are meaningless. The second is that the Internet is not free. Content creators must receive fair compensation for the use and reuse of their work online.
I am proud to say that in addition to achieving solid gains in crucial bread-and-butter areas such as wage rates, which include annual increases of 3% to 3 1/2 %, with absolutely no roll-backs of any kind, we came away with a contract for the members' vote that gives us precisely the groundbreaking new-media guarantees we sought.
Perhaps most important, the deal sets a critical precedent for the industry by giving us jurisdiction over programs produced for the Internet. It also doubles residuals payments for TV and movie downloads from what is currently being paid, and, for the first time, it offers residuals for shows used in ad-supported streaming.
