Three years after writers called pencils down against the major film and TV studios, the relationship between the two seems to have cooled off, and a few weeks into the WGA’s latest bargaining cycle with the AMPTP, it’s become pretty clear that another strike is unlikely. Ironically, that seems to be the least of the writers guild’s problems right now as the west coast division breaks down from the inside.

The WGA West staff has now been on strike for nearly seven weeks. The 115-member unit walked off the job in mid-February, having attempted to negotiate its first contract with WGAW management since September and alleging multiple unfair labor practices as well as a refusal to bargain on several topics. The WGA West denies any wrongdoing, but that hasn’t assuaged many members who find the debacle to be a bad look, to say the least.

“It’s, at best, ironic and, at worst, hypocritical,” longtime WGAW member and Arrow executive producer Marc Guggenheim told Deadline. “Just the naked hypocrisy of resisting your employees unionizing when you, yourself, are a labor union — that’s just a level of cognitive dissonance that I didn’t think anyone was capable of.” 

For context, this is only an issue on the west coast as the WGA East and West are separate entities that occasionally operate in a joint capacity, including for certain labor negotiations and the WGAE staff is not on strike.

WGAW management’s public response has been limited thus far. They have released an updated side-by-side comparison of both parties’ proposals and counter-proposals, though this was prior to a Hail Mary offer from the staff last week that the WGSU hopes may be “strike-ending”. As of publication, the WGSU has not heard back from the WGAW on that. 

Other than that, the guild has done little to solve the impasse with their staff besides try to assure members that this situation will not impact talks with the AMPTP. 

“As far as how the Writers Guild has been messaging things, I kind of feel honestly like there’s been a little bit of willful ignorance to how serious the staff has been and was prior to going out on strike,” Guggenheim added. “It feels to me like the Writer’s Guild never thought that the staff would go out on strike, and that was not a good bet.”

Deadline has spoken to more than a dozen other WGAW members who feel similarly, some of whom have joined the staff on the picket line outside the guild’s Los Angeles headquarters at the busy intersection of Fairfax Ave. and 3rd St. All of them say that the staff strike is only illuminating a rift between members and management that has been growing for some time.

The staff’s rebellion came six months after the guild expelled Emmy-nominated Park Chan-wook and Don McKellar over an alleged strike violation for work on The Sympathizer, which both of them have pushed back on. The guild also expelled or suspended several others around that time for actions during the 2023 strike.

In each case, Deadline understands that the decision was made by the Board of Directors despite recommendations for lesser punishments from the disciplinary trial committees who heard the cases — a revelation that prompted a flurry of discussion among members after a juror on one of the trial committees spoke out against the Board’s decision in an unofficial social media channel.

The WGA Constitution carves out a powerful avenue for the Board of Directors to act as it sees fit on disciplinary matters. While a trial committee is necessary, the Board “may in its discretion increase or decrease discipline to be imposed upon a member found guilty,” the governing document states. 

But just because the Board can up the penalty, doesn’t mean it should, several members argued to Deadline. 

“It’s so Trumpy,” one longtime WGA member said last year, speaking about the situation on the condition of anonymity. They add that “there became kind of a schism” within the guild following the punishments as members began to resent what felt like unnecessarily brutal consequences for minor violations, especially during a time when jobs in Hollywood are scarce and many are struggling.

Speaking with Deadline, another writer who was expelled from the guild called the disciplinary hearing a “farcical trial where we were already assumed guilty before we started.”

Still, even as some raised concerns privately to leadership, most kept quiet publicly. The expelled writer added, “The membership is afraid of their own guild and rightfully so because obviously they operate out of fear and intimidation.”

The expelled writer is not alone in feeling that way, either. Deadline has spoken to dozens of members who confirm that WGAW leadership discourages rank-and-file members from speaking ill of the union in public — and especially to the press.

At the time, a source told us that the outspoken trial committee member ended their frustrated social media post with a plea: “If anyone leaks this to Deadline, I’m going to be so angry.”

“There’s a whole culture in the guild of ‘Don’t air our dirty laundry,’” another longtime WGA member told Deadline, who says their problems with those in charge have been brewing for some time.

“I’ve been really opposed to a lot of the things that have gone down basically since the whole ATA conflict where we all had to fire our agents,” they added. “That’s when I started feeling like something was wrong with the guild just in terms of our culture and leadership.”

In 2019, members fired their agents en masse as a show of solidarity as the guild waged a campaign against talent agencies that refused to get on board with the WGA’s then-newly revised Code of Conduct, which banned packaging fees and required agencies to sever their ties to affiliated production entities.

The fight lasted nearly two years before the last of the major agencies finally caved. WGA West leadership swiftly branded this a victory for the union, citing solidarity among the membership as a unifying force that proved the “strength and resolve” of the guild. It set the stage for the overwhelming approval of a strike authorization in 2023 just one month into contract negotiations with the AMPTP.  

“There was no dialogue. There was no conversation. As a result, we ended up with a radical objective, which was to get rid of packaging entirely, as opposed to what we should have been doing, which is fixing packaging so that it works as well for the writers as it was working for the agents,” Guggenheim told Deadline. “The way I describe the ATA action is that the guild shot itself in the head and then congratulated themselves on having perfect aim.”

One veteran writer, speaking on the condition of anonymity called the agency campaign “a slap in the face” that many members privately believed would backfire, but few were willing to say so in public. Recalling a WGAW event shortly before the mass firing, the source says they asked about “whether this might not work and whether there was another way to handle it.”

“I felt like I was getting laughed at… it definitely radicalizes you,” the source said.

Despite some displeasure with the agency campaign, the rank-and-file remained largely loyal to the leadership. That is, until the 2023 strike. If you ask WGA West leadership about the state of the industry post-strike, most will acknowledge the obvious: There are fewer writers working than there were four years ago. 

In its most recent jobs report, the guild said that there was about a 25% decrease in employed television writers from the 2020-2021 TV season to the 2023-2024 season. The guild also noted a 12% decrease in employed screenwriters. The strike is most certainly a factor in that data, given that the work stoppage continued into the start of the fall season and upended production schedules left and right.

But most writers, even those adversely affected, are quick to point out that the writing was on the wall well before the strikes. Even when the business appeared to be booming, the television landscape was changing as episode orders shrank and the time between seasons grew. 

And, as former WGAW president Meredith Stiehm told Deadline on the one-year anniversary of the strike, “the companies decide the level of production, and we negotiate to ensure that the jobs that are there are good ones.” 

Current leadership spoke little of the strike during an interview ahead of this year’s AMPTP talks, only hoping that the studios had learned a lesson after the writers walked the picket lines for 148 days in 2023. They’ve also not entirely ruled out a strike this time around, even though it’s fairly clear that the WGAW is in no position to gamble with bringing the industry to yet another grinding halt. 

It’s that brazenness, even with its own staff on strike and a health insurance fund that will be virtually insolvent within the year without a cash infusion from the studios, that has antagonized members even further. 

“I think that they’re trying to diffuse member anger so they can continue on doing whatever it is they feel is necessary to be done, but that that strategy tends to leave a lot of unhappy people who still want answers,” Hawaii Five-O and Chicago Fire scribe and former WGAW board member Liz Alper recently told Deadline after picketing with the staff. “And that’s what we’re seeing right now… a lot of members who are going, ‘I’m not getting answers. Something isn’t adding up here. What’s the story that we’re not being told?’”

Alper, who also shepherded the grassroots movement Pay Up Hollywood to advocate for better working conditions for low-level staffers and assistants, said that she joined the WGSU’s picket line and decided to speak more publicly about her disillusionment with the guild because of her experience on the board. Many of the issues the WGSU has raised about working conditions at the WGAW, particularly those about pay inequities, are not new, she added.

She told Deadline she spent most of her tenure “advocating to our board members about how low paid our staff was [and] the fact that we were not retaining staff members because they were so woefully underpaid”.

“It was an ongoing conversation all the way through the strike,” she said, explaining that she left the board under the impression that the remaining leadership was aligned on solving these problems. “But then this conflict came up, and for me, it’s just incredibly frustrating, because I know how long it’s been behind the scenes, even before unionization efforts, to try and get not just fair pay but fair treatment.”

Speaking with Deadline ahead of MBA negotiations, newly elected WGAW President Michele Mulroney insisted that “the membership of the guild is confident that our WGA management team has been engaging in very good faith, and we look forward to the union having a deal”. 

That does not, however, seem to be the case for all. 

Multiple high-profile members have expressed solidarity with the WGSU. After the WGA Awards west coast ceremony was canceled due to the ongoing strike, would-be host Atsuko Okatsuka agreed to headline the staff’s strike fund benefit comedy show the same night. 

Sweet Magnolias showrunner Sheryl Anderson told Deadline from the picket line that, when news broke that the staff union was striking against WGA management, “my first instinct was, I know we would not have survived our strike if it hadn’t been for the staff”.

“I am stunned and disappointed by how this has been handled — or not,” she said, adding that she’s hoping for “a swift and just resolution that recognizes the value of this incredible staff”.

Privately, some writers walking the staff picket line still had faith in WGAW management to negotiate a satisfactory deal with the AMPTP amid the drama. Others, not so much.

Brittani Nichols, a writer and producer on Abbott Elementary and a former strike captain, wrote online that the WGAW’s recent actions toward staff are “embarrassing”.

“And worst of all, it makes people believe that it is us, the writers, who are causing this to happen when it is something I am horrified is being done in our names,” Nichols’ post on Instagram noted. “The guild claims this ongoing dispute will not undermine writers during negotiations. Of course it will. To think the studios will not jump at every opportunity to weaken us is nuts.”

The WGA and the AMPTP are not operating under an official media blackout, but both sides have been largely silent since talks began. Deadline understands that things are going quite well between the two parties, all things considered. 

As we’ve previously reported, the priority for all three above-the-line unions, the WGA especially, is to replenish their health insurance funds after several years of operating in a deficit. We understand that the studios have offered a cash infusion in exchange for the longer contract cycle that we reported in December they’d be seeking. The unions have so far chafed at the idea, but it’s not entirely out of the realm of possibility, sources tell us. While the AMPTP is seeking to up the deal from three to five years, it’s appearing more likely that a four-year deal is a compromise everyone can stomach. 

Talks between the AMPTP and WGA will wind down over the impending holiday weekend before picking back up for the remainder of the month. The writers technically have until May, when the DGA’s talks begin, to reach a tentative agreement. Insiders hope they may be able to reach a deal even sooner, which would certainly be a positive sign for Tinsel Town after SAG-AFTRA had to extend their talks into June.

As for an internal resolution at the WGAW, that might be a bumpier road. After news broke Tuesday that the striking WGAW staff would be booted off their health insurance plans effective April 1, a person with knowledge said that western executive director Ellen Stutzman has met with the staff union’s leadership twice since AMPTP talks began. In those conversations, she made it clear “what the path to a deal looks like,” one guild source says. That path is basically to take the March 11 deal management put on the table, though we hear there’s some wiggle room.

We also hear that the WGAW does not plan to publicly rebuttal the staff’s March 26 “strike-ending” proposal.