After five tough weeks of negotiations, SAG and AFTRA agreed to a new contract with studios and networks worth $200 million over the next three years.
Under the new contract, actors will get a 9% minimum pay raise over three years and the largest amount of employer money?$60 million?ever put into the unions’ health and pension plans.
L.A.-based national SAG president Melissa Gilbert proclaimed it as “the richest deal ever secured for actors in the history of collective bargaining.”
What the unions did not get, however, was a higher share of DVD residuals.
“We met the expected obstinacy from producers on DVDs and fought the issue until the very end,” said Gilbert. “But it would be neither wise nor responsible to pursue our only alternative?shutting the town down and risk losing the historic gains we achieved.”
The joint board of SAG and AFTRA will consider the new deal on Jan. 29, after which the contract must be approved by union members. If granted, it will advance to the entire membership for ratification. The two unions have nearly 200,000 members nationally.
Approval by SAG’s 130,000 members, however, is said to be no sure thing, as the union is bitterly divided between a group headed by Gilbert, James Cromwell and Mike Farrell, and a group that includes Valerie Harper, Elliott Gould and Diane Ladd.
Contract highlights include:
- The largest increase in 13 years in background jobs
- Better safeguards for stunt coordinators, greater protection for dancers, new health and pension coverage for choreographers
- A new, innovative system that allows actors to “bank” eligibility credits that can later be used to maintain health coverage the year after their series is cancelled
- A critical partnership with writers and directors to save scripted programming and combat the onslaught of reality programming
- Acknowledgement and respect for performers with disabilities
Gilbert said the unions made concessions on the DVD residual issue rather than fight it, knowing the studios were prepared to endure a protracted strike.
“We faced a choice,” she said. “We could either gamble with our members’ lives and careers just a few years after the commercials strike, or exploit the DVD issue to nail down as many other lucrative gains as possible and keep actors working.”
The studios, represented at the bargaining table by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, say DVD revenues are essential to maintaining their bottom lines in the light of rising production and marketing expenses.
Even with an outdated formula, video revenues to SAG members rose 54% in the last three years that revenues have been reported.
