DGA Monthly

A P R I L 2 0 2 0 I 1 Dear Members: It's with great pleasure that we present to you the details of the newly negotiated Basic Agreement and Freelance Live & Tape Television Agreement for 2020. This is a strong agreement with important gains in key areas including: dramatic improvements in our SVOD residuals and coverage; a significant increase in funding for our Pension Plan to secure our retirement promises now and into the future; healthy wage increases; and significant wins in television creative rights. Negotiations, which lasted 3 ½ weeks, were led by the two of us, together with our National Executive Director Russell Hollander – and supported by the excellent work of more than 80 of your fellow members from every category and region who served on our Negotiations Committee, as well as the dedicated DGA professional staff. While the process was every bit as demanding and rigorous as we expected it to be, the outcome was fantastic, and we are very proud of the deal we reached. Even though it is the best-funded Pension Plan in the industry, increased funding for the DGA-Producer Pension Plan was an important priority to further secure it from downturns in the market. We achieved several gains in this area, including an increase in the Employer contribution rate to the Pension Plan of one percent (1%) in the first year of the agreement from 7% to 8%. Most of you will also be receiving healthy raises, with wages set to increase 2.5% in the first year of the agreement, and 3% in the second and third years of the agreement. Combined, our gains in wages and pension broke through the 3% ceiling. As streaming continues to overtake other forms of distribution and expand in scope, SVOD was again a major focus of these negotiations. We achieved important structural changes, and a nearly 50% increase in residuals for members working on original SVOD series, bringing the three-year residual for a 60-minute series on the highest subscriber SVOD services to more than $73,000. That number will now exceed the average residuals earned from all markets for the most popular network series. We also turned a significant corner in feature film director inclusion, achieved gains for members working in non-dramatic programming, and secured improvements in safety and SVOD features. In parallel to the economic negotiations, we conducted one of the most significant creative rights negotiations focused on television directors in decades – chaired by Paris Barclay and co-chaired by Matthew Penn, with the full force of the Television Creative Rights Committee behind them. Among the gains achieved in these talks were significant improvements related to late scripts. So many people worked long and hard to make this contract a reality. We thank the members of the Negotiations Committee for all their time and dedication to this process. We also thank the Guild's professional staff, who worked for many months to prepare for these negotiations. And finally, we salute Russ Hollander. We were so fortunate to chair these negotiations with Russ at our side guiding us. Please take time to look through the ratification package, and do not hesitate to call the Guild if you have any questions. We hope you are as proud of this new deal as we are, and we urge you to vote YES before the April 2 deadline. Jon Avnet & Todd Holland Negotiations Committee Co-Chairs Jon Avnet and Todd Holland DGA 2020 NEGOTIATIONS A Message From Negotiations Co-Chairs Jon Avnet & Todd Holland

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