DGA Members Ratify New Contract with the AMPTP

LOS ANGELES, February 21:
The members of the Directors Guild of America (DGA) have agreed to ratify a new
3-year contract with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers
(AMPTP) on the terms of wage increases and residuals on new-media use.

In a statement, DGA’s president, Michael Apted, commented: "It is my great
pleasure to announce that the DGA membership has overwhelmingly voted to ratify
the new collective bargaining agreements between the DGA and the Alliance of
Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP).

"The
vote reflects the strong support and enthusiasm our members have for our new
contract. We won important gains such as higher wages, higher residual bases,
significant improvements in basic cable, a more secure health plan, and
solutions to problems affecting our ADs and UPMs.

"We
also set a series of important precedents crucial to our survival in this
digital age—among them, jurisdiction in new media, a doubling of the
home-video rate as it applies to electronic sell-through, and the establishment
of a gross based payment in ad-supported streaming while maintaining our
historic fixed residuals where there is continued uncertainty about actual
grosses.

“We entered
this round of bargaining steadfast in our belief, borne of 70 years of
negotiating experience, that what would make it possible for us to achieve our
goals was our 18 months of research and preparation, our understanding of the
issues our industry faces, and our willingness to sit across the table and
negotiate until a conclusion was reached. We also recognized that this was only
the beginning of a series of difficult negotiations and that we are still years
away from the time when new media will be our industry's dominant revenue
source. This was, is, and will continue to be our approach to collective
bargaining in this digital age. We believe the results speak for themselves.”

The
tentative agreement between the DGA and the AMPTP was announced in January; the
deal came after just one week of
formal negotiations, which followed months of informal discussions and nearly
two years of preparation and research by guild staff and consultants.

—By Irene Lew