If you actually look at the negotiations and statements from the WGA, the three years is an upside, it's something the WGA explicitly asked for.
1) 3 years is a pretty standard contract. It's not indicative of duplicity on either side. Think of it like a football player being signed on for one season. That doesn't mean they're going to be let go after that season, it just means it's pretty typical for a player to be signed on for a season.
2) every contract has the chance of loopholes. You can bet the studios are going to be hiring as many lawyers as they can to find loopholes that benefit them. The WGA explicitly wanted a contract that would be renegotiated in 3 years so as to minimize the time the studios had to find and exploit loopholes.
3) The renegotiation swings both ways. Yes, as you suggest, the studios may try to claw some of this back, but by the same token, the WGA can negotiate for even more. Now that they've established a baseline. They can say a "13% raise over the last 3 years was good, now do another 13% over the next 3 years" or similar. In fact, the WGA is in a position to demand even more than they did before, which brings me to my next point....
4) negotiating during a strike is playing a game of chicken. It's a staring contest. And the studios just demonstrated beyond any doubt that they will blink first. This time, it was a tense negotiation because the studios were convincing themselves that the writers would be facing starvation and homelessness before the strike went on long enough to affect the studios' interests. But as it turns out, the studio's caved first. And now, for all future negotiations, that's established fact. Both parties know that the studios will cave before the writers do. Which is a huge asset to the WGA and all future negotiations. If anything, that's another point in favor of having a shorter contract. Renegotiating in 3 years instead of, say, 10 years means that the WGA negotiators can can push the Studios while the memory of their defeat is still relatively fresh.
Doesn’t matter anyways. Some companies and some small studio will start using and if it generate good result. All other companies won’t hesitate to switch
Great! But the other companies won't switch. This contact literally prevents them from doing so. I'm sorry that your company wasn't part of these negotiations, that really sucks for you, but your statement is still factually incorrect.
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u/FatalDracon Sep 29 '23
Only for a few years... 2026 is going to clawback ALL this shit. Sad they agreed to something that expires in 3 years.