WGA protest planned for Apple Park and other Apple retail stores today as writers’ strike enters second month

The Writers’ Guild of America is capitalizing on the media attention surrounding Apple today and its WWDC announcements by planning leafletting protests at several Apple Stores, including the Apple Park Visitor Center.

As the writers’ strike enters its second month without any sign of a deal, the group is now ramping up campaigns against individual studios. This includes Apple because of its Apple TV+ original content division.

With the industry transitioning from highly syndicated >20-episode order network broadcast dramas and comedies to ~10 episode streaming series with significantly lower associated residuals, writers are being left worse off in the streaming boom.

The writers’ union is bargaining for higher base wages, higher streaming residuals, provisions against the use of artificial intelligence for screenwriting, among other requests. Being on strike means that no writing work is happening for Hollywood TV shows and movies currently shooting or those in development.

Many Apple TV+ shows currently in production have been disrupted by WGA picketing, including high-profile hits like the second season of sci-fi drama Severance. Other projects in the pipeline are delayed until scripts can be completed.

Today, the WGA is pushing its members to participate in an “Apple Day of Action” with leafletting protests planned for several Apple retail stores, including the Visitor Center at Apple Park. Impacted stores include the flagship Fifth Avenue (New York) and Tower Theatre (Los Angeles) stores.

This is a copy of the leaflet that describes the writers’ stance against Apple:

The WGA strike is not expected to be resolved for many months yet, in part because the studios are also concurrently tied up in negotiations with the other large guilds, the Directors Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild.

The DGA agreed to a tentative contract renewal over the weekend, securing higher residuals and an anti-AI clause.

The Screen Actors Guild is currently in negotiations with the studios over its contract for Hollywood actors, which expires on June 30. SAG is currently polling its members for authorization to strike, as it is unclear whether they will get an acceptable deal before their contract expires at the end of the month. There’s a chance that both writers and actors are on strike at the same time this summer.