The Writers Guild of America West headquarters. Mario Tama/Getty Images Members of the Writers Guild of America gave the green light on Friday to a four-year deal with studios and streamers that will stem the bleeding of the union’s ailing health plan.
The atypically long pact, which injects $321 million into the plan, was supported by slightly more than 90 percent of members and rejected by 9.6 percent in a ratification vote.
“In the face of industry contraction and runaway healthcare cost inflation, writers were able to secure a contract that returns our Health Fund to a sustainable path and builds on gains from the 2023 strike,” WGA West president Michele Mulroney said in a statement as she thanked everyone involved in the process.
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The results arrived after union negotiators sought to convince members that trading a shorter deal for the largest-ever boost to annual health funding in the union’s history was a worthy bargain. “Agreeing to a four-year deal this time allowed us to get more and new funding for the health plan than we’ve actually ever gotten before,” the co-chair of the WGA’s negotiating committee, Danielle Sanchez-Witzel, told The Hollywood Reporter in an interview published earlier in the week.
Union members also had to swallow changes to their health plan as a result of the deal. Starting in 2027, individual plan users will be required to pay $75 per month for a PPO plan with previously no premium. Earnings thresholds required to qualify for the plan will increase, as will deductibles and out-of-pocket maximums. Amid this transformation, however, the contract deal introduces a lower-cost plan that can serve as an alternative for writers with a $25 a month premium.
Some members took those adjustments in stride, while others weren’t convinced. In an email seen by THR, leaders of the union’s Committee of Black Writers informed members on April 15 that they would be voting “no” on ratifying the contract due to changes to the union’s health plan. “As it stands now, this deal will hurt more writers than it will help,” the three committee co-chairs wrote.
In addition to the changes to the health plan, the deal raises most minimum payments by 10.5 percent over the course of the deal, increases the residual base for domestic and foreign high-budget streaming projects and increases the union’s streaming success bonus. The union also made progress on its campaign against employers asking for “free work” from writers by expanding the union’s “second-step” payment for screenplays and limiting any requests for rewrites or delivery to the named person on a writer’s contract.
The union’s AI language, first enshrined in 2023 after the WGA’s 148-day strike, remains largely unchanged. The studios did agree as part of the 2026 deal to notify the union and give them the opportunity to bargain if they license writers’ work to train a commercial generative AI system that will produce outputs.
New Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers president Greg Hessinger negotiated the pact on behalf of studios and streamers while the WGA West’s chief negotiator and executive director Ellen Stutzman led the talks for the union with negotiating committee co-chairs John August and Sanchez-Witzel.
In a statement, the AMPTP said the deal “reflects a collaborative approach that supports both writers and the industry’s long-term stability.”
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