SAG-AFTRA Congratulates Writers Guild on New Deal As Actors’ Strike Continues

Hours after the Writers Guild of America announced it struck a tentative agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, SAG-AFTRA issued a statement congratulating their colleagues on the new deal. 

“SAG-AFTRA congratulates the WGA on reaching a tentative agreement with the AMPTP after 146 days of incredible strength, resiliency and solidarity on the picket lines,” SAG-AFTRA officials shared in a statement. “While we look forward to reviewing the WGA and AMPTP’s tentative agreement, we remain committed to achieving the necessary terms for our members.”

The actors’ guild went on strike weeks after their counterparts at the WGA, and negotiations between SAG-AFTRA and the AMPTP officials have largely been at a stalemate since. As of this writing, actors have been on the picket lines for 73 days.

“Since the day the WGA strike began, SAG-AFTRA members have stood alongside the writers on the picket lines,” SAG-AFTRA’s statement adds. “We remain on strike in our TV/Theatrical contract and continue to urge the studio and streamer CEOs and the AMPTP to return to the table and make the fair deal that our members deserve and demand.”

Why are actors striking?

As with their writing counterparts, the use of artificial intelligence has been a major sticking point in negotiations with studios.

“This ‘groundbreaking’ AI proposal that they gave us yesterday: they propose that our background performers should be able to be scanned, get paid for one day’s pay, and their company should own that scan their image, their likeness and should be able to use it for the rest of eternity in any project they want with no consent and no compensation,” SAG-AFTRA counsel Duncan Crabtree-Ireland revealed at a union press conference earlier this year. “So if you think that’s a groundbreaking proposal, I suggest you think again.”

“What makes you think they’re not interested in what’s happening here?” SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher added. “I think that they have an allegiance to all of us because we bring joy to their lives, and during COVID, they turned to us for everything.”

She concluded, “xSo I don’t think that your assumption that they don’t really care about anything but being entertained over the summer is the bottom line, when the people that give so much to them and enrich their lives in so many ways, are saying, ‘We are being taken advantage of in a terrible way.’ And if we let this happen to us, dollars for doughnuts, it’s gonna happen to you and your family, your children, and everybody that you work with too. That’s how threatening this moment is in our nation’s history.”