Yahoo News Amid Writers Strike, Hollywood’s Next Big Question May Be: Is SAG-AFTRA Next?
Three weeks and two days. Starting Wednesday, that’s how long SAG-AFTRA will have to negotiate a set of agreements that affect a vast swath of union performers working in film and television — about 160,000 members, from actors to dancers to stunt performers — before those current contracts expire June 30.
Within this compressed period, and as thousands of the industry’s writers continue to strike following the breakdown of their own negotiations, Hollywood’s largest union is aiming to tackle both present, meat-and-potatoes and future-looking issues, including the threat of generative AI and streaming residuals that many members believe are insufficient. It’s undertaken an unusually lengthy member input process prior to talks with entertainment companies: The union’s survey of the issues members care about nationwide took place over about eight weeks instead of the typical six, while its plenary committee dedicated to considering proposals from around the country met for seven days, instead of two. Now, armed with a strike authorization vote, which nearly 98 percent of voting members supported, the union is seeking to maximize this moment — one of high engagement in Hollywood labor thanks to the writers’ work stoppage, rampant inflation and fears around AI — in its talks with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP).
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“I expect to deploy the full leverage that SAG-AFTRA has generated in various ways to make a deal,” says the union’s chief negotiator and national executive director Duncan Crabtree-Ireland. “And if there is a deal to be made, we’ll make it.” The AMPTP has said it is approaching the negotiations “with the goal of achieving a new agreement that is beneficial to SAG-AFTRA members and the industry overall.”
In some cases, the issues that SAG-AFTRA is seeking to tackle in this negotiation overlap with those prioritized by the industry’s writers and directors in their own talks with the AMPTP. Regulating the present and potential future effects of generative AI on union members, for instance, is a top priority. Though some notable examples of the tech are already in use (take Harrison Ford’s de-aged performance in the upcoming Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny) and talent lawyers have been working to shield clients from nonconsensual exploitations of their likeness or voice, the union has taken the position that terms and conditions around rights to use AI to replicate a member’s performance are a mandatory subject of bargaining. Like its sister entertainment unions, SAG-AFTRA is also seeking to raise wage floors in a way that addresses exploding inflation in recent years. Streaming residuals, too, are a key item on the docket — the union argues that the current formula is not taking global consumption into account enough and needs to be reworked.
Explains actor Assaf Cohen (Chicago Fire, Fauda), a former SAG-AFTRA national board member, the residuals status quo is “no longer working for us.” Without a system that better compensates performers, “you’re going to get hobbyists and celebrities, and anybody in the middle class — which I would argue is the majority of SAG-AFTRA performers — are no longer going to be able to make a living off of these contracts,” he adds.
Other priorities are slightly more specific to the performers group, like bolstering the union’s health, retirement and pension plans. While doing so is often an item on the agenda in union negotiations, SAG-AFTRA’s benefits have unique issues. Several members who spoke with THR said they specifically wanted the union to raise its pension and health employer contribution caps; the pension cap hasn’t been increased since 1983. Meanwhile, a 2020 restructuring of the health plan stripped coverage from thousands of members, according to a class-action lawsuit that was recently settled, and many would like to see a strong infusion of funds into the embattled plan. Changing the rules around self-taped auditions — which have long been an option for actors, but became the standard at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and have since resulted in “a massive, daily, uncompensated burden” on members, per the union — are additionally in its crosshairs.
SAG-AFTRA has signaled that its proposal on AI may be a sticking point, telling members that “the companies have not shown a desire to take our members’ basic rights to our own voices and likenesses seriously.” But AI has quickly become a core issue for many performers as the technology has rapidly developed within the past year and is a bone of contention in the writers strike. (In their negotiations, the writers proposed banning the technology from writing “literary” material or being used as “source” material; the companies allegedly responded by offering annual meetings on developing technology, a response that raised hackles.)
Says one SAG-AFTRA board member, who opted to speak anonymously because he was not authorized to speak, of this alleged AMPTP response: “If that’s how they treated the writers with their reasonable demands after six weeks, what can we expect going in where we have a three-week window before our contract expires?”
The Directors Guild of America did reach a consensus with the AMPTP on AI: In its tentative deal, reached June 3, both parties agreed that “generative AI cannot replace the duties performed by members,” the union has stated. However, the DGA but has not released the full details of this agreement yet and its members have yet to ratify the contract. On Sunday, Crabtree-Ireland told SAG-AFTRA members it was “premature” to draw any particular conclusions from the pact.
Justine Bateman (Violet), a member of the WGA, DGA and SAG-AFTRA, believes that the AI issue is existential for the performers union. “Right now, the leadership at SAG [must institute] stringent protections from the use of AI to replace actors or the profession of acting dies on their watch,” she says. Voice actor Tim Friedlander (Record of Ragnarok), president of the National Association of Voice Actors, says that when it comes to the developing technology, the union must “get our framework in place now because we’re not going to be able to claw things back in the future.”
Overall, it’s still unclear how the ongoing writers strike or the DGA’s deal could affect SAG-AFTRA’s negotiations. Crabtree-Ireland insists that any speculation that pattern bargaining — when one party in a labor negotiation endeavors to institute at least some of the same provisions bargained in a different negotiation — will determine the fate of his union’s talks is inaccurate: “Our members have their own unique interests, concerns and experiences. And so as far as I’m concerned, nothing is a default,” he says.
Actor Katrina Sherwood (East Bay) believes, at the very least, that the writers strike helped activate SAG-AFTRA members and get them more involved in their own union. The union sends out frequent messages encouraging members to picket with the WGA during their off hours, while prominent members including Mark Ruffalo, Colin Farrell and Chris Pine have all pounded the pavement with scribes. “There’s so much more of a sense of community since the WGA’s strike authorization,” Sherwood says. “I think them going first made a lot of our union members feel like this is worthy, this is important [and] if they can do it, we can do it.”
When all is said and done, would SAG-AFTRA actually go on strike this year? In recent years, the union has mounted a handful of smaller strikes — against an advertising agency in 2018 and 11 major video games companies in 2016-17 — but has not initiated a work stoppage against major film and television companies in four decades. When it comes to that potential, “that’s up to our employers,” says Cohen. “If they treat us as their creative partners and address our concerns adequately, then there should be no need to strike.”
“I don’t think SAG is bluffing,” says actor Ever Carradine (The Handmaid’s Tale), when it comes to its strike authorization vote. She adds, “My uncle David used to always say the only actors who don’t make it are the ones that quit. And recently I’ve been thinking the only actors that don’t make it are the ones that can’t afford to do it anymore. Like, the state of the industry needs to change.”
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