Screen Actors Guild has sat down at the bargaining table with Hollywood studios and the networks over a new three-year deal on the key issue of improved movie and prime-time TV residuals from new media platforms.
The outcome of these talks will be crucial to the recovery and ongoing viability of the TV and film business. SAG has threatened to strike June 30 when its contract ends with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP).
SAG leaders said publicly they will push for an even better deal than the one writers won as the result of the Writers Guild’s crippling 100-day strike..
SAG, which represents 120,000 members nationally, approximately 4,500 in Chicago, will bargain separately after years of joint bargaining with AFTRA. AFTRA rejected an eleventh-hour offer from SAG to join in on the negotiations.
AFTRA national executive director Kim Roberts Hedgpeth sent SAG chief negotiator Doug Allen a letter explaining that the offer came too late for its national board to meet, “thoughtfully discuss” and vote on the offer.
AFTRA also questioned whether SAG had changed its positions on “any of the serious problems” that had caused AFTRA to walk away from the 27-year-old joint bargaining agreement three weeks ago, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Chicago representatives attending that meeting in L.A. were SAG local presidentTodd Hissong, SAG national members John Carter Brown and Nancy Sellers and Shirley Kelly, AFTRA
AFTRA has two observers in the room, standard for unions that will be bargaining with the same employers. SAG, for example, sat in on talks between the WGA and AMPTP, and SAG is invited to sit on the talks between AFTRA and the AMPTP, scheduled to begin April 28.
