AMPTP: 'Writers remain among the highest paid employees in America'

New details have emerged regarding the latest proposal offered to the WGA from the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. EW has obtained an exclusive memo that was circulated Friday by the AMPTP to all of the member companies outlining the “New Economic Partnership” it presented to the writers late Thursday before talks were postponed until Dec. 4. Along with explaining how the new offer would deliver more than $130 million in additional compensation “above and beyond the more than $1.3 billion working writers already receive each year,” the letter said the average pay for a working writer could increase up to $31,000 over the three-year life of the contract, which would be “on top of the current average writer’s compensation of more than $200,000 a year.”

“With these improvements, writers remain among the highest paid employees in America,” the letter said. “This more than $130 million increase is believed to be one of the largest compensation increases of any major union contract negotiated in recent American history.”

The AMPTP also tried to indicate that it had negotiated in good faith by withdrawing 29 proposals from its original plan and offering to remove another six, including an idea to pay residuals to writers only after the companies recovered their basic costs.

After talks broke off Thursday, the WGA distributed a detailed memo of its own that not only crunched the numbers but argued that the new proposal amounted to a “massive rollback.” The AMPTP argued in its letter that the offer to increase writers compensation by a total of $130 million is “in fact a very big ‘roll’ forward.’”