With 115 Writers Guild of America staffers nonetheless on strike after months of contract talks with the writers’ union led to no deal, the WGA West has cancelled its annual Writers Guild Awards.
Union president Michele Mulroney knowledgeable presenters scheduled to seem on the March 8 ceremony on the JW Marriott Resort of the cancellation in a memo Sunday morning, with an “different celebration” for the Los Angeles-based winners and nominees set to be held at a later date.
This previous Tuesday, the Writers Guild Employees Union revealed in an Instagram put up that the guild had refused to cut price additional on its first union contract and warned them that the awards ceremony could be cancelled if the WGSU didn’t comply with the earlier contract provide by Friday.
“Make no mistake: That is an try by WGAW administration to drive a wedge between union workers and WGA membership once we ought to be constructing unity forward of (studio negotiations),” WGSU stated within the put up.
115 WGAW staffers unionized in April 2025 with the Pacific Northwest Staffers Union (PNWSU), in search of its first union contract with WGAW by the tip of that yr. As a substitute, WGSU went on strike on February 17, accusing WGAW of “surface-level bargaining” and unfair labor practices, submitting a proper criticism to the Nationwide Labor Relations Board on the latter.
Among the many points the WGSU is seeking to handle within the contract is protections in opposition to using synthetic intelligence software program to surveil staff and monitor efficiency. They’re additionally in search of a standardized system of simply trigger protections, together with due course of via arbitration.
The staffers are additionally calling for union scale wage with bigger annual will increase than what writers obtain of their contract with Hollywood studios, one thing that the WGSU stated is important as a result of not like writers, they don’t have brokers to barter over-scale pay.
This previous Tuesday, dozens of WGA members joined the WGSU in solidarity on the picket line on the WGAW headquarters on Fairfax, with an estimated 120 folks participating between the 2 sides. WGAW captains on the picket line advised TheWrap that the 2023 writers’ strike had constructed shut relationships between union members and the staffers who helped oversee the logistics of the work stoppage.
“We might not have survived the 2023 strike with out the staffers. They had been the primary to point out up on the picket traces earlier than any writers confirmed up they usually had been the final to depart on the finish of the day,” stated Jackie Penn, vice chair of the WGAW Committee for Black Writers.
The Writers Guild of America East will proceed its personal awards ceremony in New York, the place this yr’s winners can be introduced. Amongst this yr’s nominees are Paul Thomas Anderson for “One Battle After One other,” Ryan Coogler for “Sinners,” Chloe Zhao for “Hamnet” and Ronald Bronstein and Josh Safdie for “Marty Supreme.”
Within the TV class, writers for “The Pitt,” “Andor,” “The Studio,” and “Pluribus” had been amongst this yr’s nominees.
Extra to return…