The Writers Guild of America West — the same organization that led thousands of screenwriters through a grueling 148-day strike in 2023—now faces a strike from its own employees. The guild’s staff has voted 82-18 to authorize a work stoppage, accusing WGA leadership of the same tactics the union once railed against: bad faith bargaining, unlawful surveillance, and retaliation.
The timing couldn’t be worse.
WGA leadership is set to begin negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers on March 16, with the contract expiring May 1. Instead of presenting a united front, the guild is fighting on two fronts—one against the studios, another against the very workers who kept operations running during the last strike.
According to Variety, the staff union, organized under the Pacific Northwest Staff Union last spring, has been negotiating since September with intermittent progress. The 100-person unit includes attorneys, research analysts, residuals representatives, and software engineers—the infrastructure that actually runs the guild.
“If management won’t bargain in good faith with us at the table, we will see them on the picket line,” the staff union posted Thursday. No strike deadline has been set.
The numbers reveal a stark power imbalance. Sixty-four percent of WGA West staffers earn less than $84,850—the official low-income threshold for a single-person household in Los Angeles County. Management has offered a minimum salary of $55,000; staff is asking for $59,737. The gap is modest in dollars but enormous in principle.
Beyond wages, the staff is seeking just-cause employment protections, AI safeguards, and work-from-home provisions. Management says it has “no intention” of using generative AI but refuses to codify that commitment, citing concerns about evaluating employee work with “new technologies.”
The WGA West denied all allegations in a statement, calling the unfair labor practice claims “without merit” and insisting it has been bargaining in good faith. The guild also assured members that AMPTP negotiations will continue regardless of any staff action, since the executive team handling those talks isn’t part of the staff bargaining unit.
But the optics are brutal. A union that spent months picketing studios for fair treatment now stands accused of retaliating against an organizing committee member and refusing its own workers the protections it demanded from management. One commenter on Variety’s story, identifying as a staffer, put it plainly: “They just take and take from our labor and give us a pittance in return.”
Hollywood’s most powerful guilds are learning what studios already know: labor solidarity is easier to preach than practice.
