The Directors Guild of America on Wednesday ratified a contract with the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers, five weeks after the two sides reached a tentative accord.
The guild “overwhelmingly voted to ratify” the contract, DGA President Michael Apted said Wednesday in a statement. The DGA didn’t release an actual voting tally.
“We won important gains such as higher wages, higher residual bases, significant improvements in basic cable (and) a more secure health plan,” Mr. Apted said.
“We also set a series of important precedents crucial to our survival in this digital age,” he said, including jurisdiction in new media, a doubling of the home video rate as it applies to electronic sell-through and the establishment of residuals based on distributors’ gross for ad-supported video streaming.
With a tentative agreement on Internet residuals reached Jan. 17, the DGA helped create a contract template that allowed the Writers Guild of America to end its 100-day strike Feb. 12. The existing DGA contract was set to expire June 30.
“Our negotiations with the DGA proved beyond any doubt that when both parties are prepared to bargain seriously, groundbreaking new-media labor pacts can be reached without resorting to harmful and unnecessary strikes,” the AMPTP said Wednesday in a statement.