US writers to vote on contract deal

American screenwriters will vote on Tuesday on a new contract with producers that has been recommended to them by the Writers Guild of America.

Guild members met on Sunday to discuss the deal and the consensus seemed to be in favour. Here's the views of two well known bloggers and writers, John August, Ken Levine.

In the L.A. Times, Scott Collins argues that the three months of industrial action have been well worth the effort.

Against formidable odds, some well-earned skepticism and endless carping from nonwriting workers who viewed themselves as collateral damage in a provincial border war, guild officials stuck to their guns and negotiated a contract with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers that, while maybe not a historic win for labor, improves some terms from the recent Directors Guild of America contract, offers a blueprint for future payouts on digital media and even eases some of the pain of the oft-lamented 1988 contract, in which writers failed to achieve their objectives despite a five-month walkout.

"It's the best deal we could have gotten under the circumstances," Howard A. Rodman, a screenwriter and member of the guild's board of directors, told me Sunday. "It accomplished the main goal we wanted when we set out on strike, which was that as the business shifted from television sets and movies to new media, we wouldn't be left behind. And we got that."