SAG-AFTRA Heading Towards a Strike

As of midnight July 14, the Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists will be going on strike for the first time since 1980.

It will also be the first time both the Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA have gone on strike together since 1960, when former United States President Ronald Reagan was the, then, president of SAG.

It had been weeks of negotiations leading to this moment. However, what exactly is SAG-AFTRA striking for?

It all goes back to May 2 when the WGA went on strike.

During their negotiation period, the WGA was seeking higher compensation and residuals, specifically when speaking about streaming shows, as well as new rules that require studios to staff television shows with a certain number of writers for a specific period of time.

They were also seeking compensation throughout the process of pre-production, production, and post-production since writers are currently expected to provide revisions or craft new material without being paid. Their final concern was over the use of artificial intelligence when it comes to script writing.

Ultimately, the WGA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers did not reach an agreement, and thus we landed on the current WGA Strike of 2023.

Now, the SAG-AFTRA Strike of 2023 has many similar concerns to the ones that the WGA have.

SAG-AFTRA was hoping to create barriers to use on AI in future television and film productions, more transparency from streaming services about viewership numbers so that residual payments can be made equitable to that seen on linear TV, improved wages, improved working conditions, and improved health and pension benefits.

Current SAG-AFTRA President, Fran Drescher, spoke out against AMPTP in a press conference on Thursday.

SAG-AFTRA even stated that producers were unwilling to offer members a fair deal and have worked to delay negotiations.

This led to AMPTP responding with their own statement saying it, “presented a deal that offered historic pay and residual increases, substantially higher caps on pension and health contributions, audition protections, shortened series option periods, and a groundbreaking AI proposal that protects actors’ digital likenesses.”

Thus leading AMPTP to accuse SAG-AFTRA of stalling negotiations.

However, Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, national executive director and chief negotiator for SAG-AFTRA, stated the AMPTP’s AI proposal was to have background performers “be able to be scanned, get paid for one day’s pay, and their company should own the scan, their image, their likeness, and should be able to use it for the rest of eternity in any project they want with no consent and no compensation.”

These comments come as reports of AMPTP’s tactics start to come to light.

Deadline reported on some of the tactics by AMPTP with one insider stating, “The endgame is to allow things to drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses,” and a separate insider stating that it was “a cruel but necessary evil.”

Actors of the film “Oppenheimer” left the London premiere with director, Christopher Nolan, telling the crowd in attendance that the cast had left and are “off to write picket signs.”

Because of this strike, actors will not be allowed to participate in principal on camera work, principal off camera work, background work, stand-in work, photo and/or body doubles, fittings, wardrobe tests, makeup tests, rehearsal and camera tests, scanning, interviews, auditioning, promotion of/publicity services for work under the TV/Theatrical contracts, negotiating and/or entering into and/or consenting to, and performing on a trailer for a struck production or other ancillary content connected to a struck production.

If anyone is found doing any of these things, they will not be allowed to join SAG-AFTRA as long as they are a working actor. For a more in-depth look, you can go to this link here: “SAG-AFTRA Lists Strike Rules for Members: No Premieres, Awards Shows, Social Media Promo, FYC Events and More”.

So what will happen next? It all still remains to be seen. We are currently seventy-one days into the Writers Strike. Once SAG-AFTRA goes on strike, productions will have to fully shut down. All that we, as consumers, can do is wait.

If you want more information on the WGA and SAG-AFTRA, you can go to their websites https://www.wga.org/ and https://www.sagaftra.org/. All information in this article comes from the CNBC article “Actors union will join writers on strike, shutting down Hollywood”.

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