Chris Keyser and David Goodman, the veteran showrunners who steered the five-month Writers Guild of America strike final yr, warned guild members on Sunday to remain vigilant in a fast-changing enterprise panorama regardless of the beneficial properties of final yr’s historic labor motion.
“Although this strike is over, the combat goes on. If we take our eye off the ball, all the things we gained can actually go away tomorrow,” Goodman instructed the group on the Writers Guild Awards on the Hollywood Palladium.
Goodman and Keyser served as co-chairs of the WGA‘s negotiating commttee final yr. The pair, each previous presidents of the WGA West, had been honored with the guild’s Morgan Cox Awards for devoted service.
“Nothing is given to labor that it doesn’t demand,” Keyser instructed the group.
Keyser mentioned the lengthy wrestle of final yr was the top results of a protracted interval of getting the union to be extra aggressive in contract negotiations.
“It was about training for the Writers Guild. It was a change that took practically 20 years and had its ups and owns and in the long run it turned us right into a combating pressure. It taught us to belief one another and our allies and it led us to perform that which each single particular person that you just meet mentioned we couldn’t try this. Many times,” Keyser mentioned. “It’s an unbroken chain of sacrifice and bravado that begins with the era that fought the strike of 2007 and 2008 — [former WGA West president] Patrick Verrone and [former WGA West executive director] David Younger — and it extends to to the strike authorization vote of 2017 and the strike 2023.”
References to the strike had been frequent in New York the place the WGA East held a simultaneous ceremony on the Edison Ballroom in Manhattan.
“It’s exhilarating once we received a contract with so many advantages and protections for writers and because the strike ended as a present of tolerating solidarity, I’ve remained unemployed,” joked late-night author Josh Gondelman, who hosted the WGA East ceremony.
Later within the evening, WGA West president Meredith Stiehm took the stage to ship a protracted listing of thank-yous to different Hollywood unions and people who supported the guild throughout its 148-day work stoppage. Stiehm famous that not like the 2007-2008 strike, the WGA obtained sturdy help from fellow unions final yr. She indicated that WGA members are ready to show solidarity with IATSE members later this yr if that union winds up in a piece stoppage. IATSE at current is deep in contract negotiations with the Alliance of Movement Image and Tv Producers.
As an alternative of being “lone wolves,” Stiehm instructed the group, “we’re in a pack — a household of Hollywood labor unions and we will probably be there for different unions like they had been there for us as a result of that’s what household does.”
(Pictured: Chris Keyser)
Lexi Carson contributed to this report.
