WGA sets Monday strike if no new deal

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 2 (UPI) -- The Writers Guild of America said Friday it will strike Monday if no new contract is reached with producers this weekend.

The WGA announced its planned walkout for 3:01 a.m. (EST) Monday at a news conference at its West headquarters in Los Angeles. The strike would be the first major WGA work stoppage since 1988.

Guild officials said they want to negotiate during the weekend with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, if producers will negotiate increased residual payments for DVDs, Variety.com reported.

The AMPTP posted a statement on its Web site calling the WGA decision "precipitous and irresponsible."

The producers said the WGA leadership "continues to pursue numerous unreasonable proposals that would result in astronomical and unjustified increases in our costs, further restrict our ability to produce, promote and market TV series and films, and prohibit us from experimenting with programming and business models in new media."

The two sides have stalemated since Wednesday on key issues such as writer compensation for work distributed on DVDs, the Internet, mobile phones and other new media.

Once a strike starts, the guild's 12,000 members will stop work on all writing covered under WGA agreements.