Global Courant 2023-05-18 08:32:56
SAG-AFTRA announced on Wednesday that it will hold a strike authorization as it tries to get its “ducks in a row” ahead of June 7 negotiations with major studios.
The vote doesn’t mean the artists’ union will necessarily join the Writers Guild of America on the picket lines after the contract expires on June 30. In a press release, the union said its negotiating committee had decided that a strike permit would provide “maximum bargaining leverage” for the talks.
“We have to get all our ducks lined up when the need arises,” SAG-AFTRA chairman Fran Drescher said in the release. “The prospect of a strike is not a first option, but a last resort. As my father always says: ‘Better to have and not need than to need and not have!’”
The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents the studios, declined to comment.
In 2017, the artists’ union threatened to issue a strike authorization as the deadline for talks approached. At the time, the union said the AMPTP was looking for “outrageous rollbacks”. The two sides eventually reached a deal without the guild having to call the ballot.
SAG-AFTRA also obtained a strike permit during the negotiations of the 2018 TV animation contract. In that case, more than 98% of the voting members approved the authorization and the parties reached an agreement two months later.
This time there will be only three weeks between the start of negotiations and the contract expiring on June 30. Casting a strike authorization vote now can be a way to exert influence without wasting time at the negotiating table.
Drescher has appeared on the WGA picket lines and she has voiced her support for the writers’ strike, which began May 2. But she caused controversy among some of her members back then last week she suggested, to Deadline, that SAG-AFTRA and the WGA have different problems.
“I don’t think what’s very important for writers — and I’m also a writer in the WGA — is the kind of thing we’re looking for,” Drescher said. “While I am very empathetic to their needs to be honored, I have a feeling our conversation will be very different. And I am hopeful that we may not get to this point.”
SAG-AFTRA looks at some of the issues that have been important to writers, including pay raises to address inflation, higher streaming residuals, and artificial intelligence protections. The union also wants to address the move to self-tape auditions, which many artists find costly and cumbersome.
In its release, the guild said that given the array of issues, “the outlook for working actors becomes unsustainable without transformative change.”
SAG-AFTRA represents 160,000 artists.
