After reaching a strike-halting tentative agreement with movie and television producers, the leadership of SAG-AFTRA — the entertainment union representing multiple categories across screens and stage — approved the deal in a board vote Friday and afterwards shared details about the new deal.
The planned three-year contract, union leaders said, will lead to more than $1 billion in new wages and benefit plan funding, streaming bonuses, minimum compensation increases, protections in place for diverse workers and “fair compensation guardrails” around the use of artificial intelligence.
Those AI guardrails, they said, include provisions requiring performer consent and union notice any time producers use generative AI to create “synthetic performers.”
“While the gains acquired in these new contracts will keep the motion picture industry sustainable as a profession for working class performers, they also serve as a reminder of what can be achieved through collective action and worker solidarity,” said SAG-AFTRA Executive Director Duncan Crabtree-Ireland. “What SAG-AFTRA members accomplished can and should be achieved by workers across all industries.”
To wit, Crabtree-Ireland said that SAG-AFTRA members plan to “rally behind” the American Federation of Musicians and the Teamsters in their own negotiations within the industry in 2024.
SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher praised the union’s negotiation team and her partnership with Crabtree-Ireland, in spite of the resistance — and disinterest — offered by the Association of Motion Picture and Television Producers.
The grueling negotiations, Drescher said, were tinged with sexism — that producers sought to discredit her, using her femininity and her heart-shaped plush companion (given to her by a little girl “to give me confidence,” she said) against her. Drescher, instead, held fast, saying she would lead with intellect, with wisdom and with empathy.
“I can lead and I can still rock a red lip. So I turned that on their head and gave women an opportunity to see what leadership could look like, if you just be who you are your authentic person without apology,” Drescher said.
As negotiations — and the strike — dragged on, the turning point in her mind came when she realized that the contract wasn’t the end of the road.
“I started to think and realize this is an ongoing, living thing — a contract — and we’re not over, we’re only just beginning,” she said. “We hold in our hands a record-breaking contract that has broken new ground and pattern again and again and again.”
That contract, which will not take effect until it passes a ratification vote by SAG-AFTRA members, includes a new fund compensating performers for livestream productions; background actor and general wage increases; terms ensuring hair and makeup services specifically for performers with diverse complexions and textured hair; and “informed consent and fair compensation” for use of digital replicas of members “whether living or deceased, whether created on-set or licensed from a third-party for use,” Crabtree-Ireland said.
The deal also covers performance capture work, requirements for on-set intimacy coordinators; doubled pay for dual-threat singers and dancers; increases to high-budget streaming video and on-demand residuals, as well as increases to residual ceilings; and more.
What that all means is that members are facing a contract worth more than $1 billion in new wages and benefits for the thousands upon thousands of lesser-known entertainment workers who had been struggling to make ends meet despite sharing an industry with some of the most famous faces in the world.
The ratification vote period, Crabtree-Ireland said, is due to open Nov. 14 and end in the first week of December. Should members vote to approve the contract, it would go into effect immediately, with stepped wage increases due in July each of the next two years.