SAG-AFTRA Calls Strike after “Insulting” Offer from Studios

SAG-AFTRA Calls Strike: Actors Join Writers after “Insulting” Offer from Studios

Joining the Writers Guild of America, the Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) has voted to strike, protesting what SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher calls “insulting and disrespectful” responses to their union’s proposals. This will be the first time actors and writers have been on strike together since 1960. The strike begins at midnight.

The news comes on the heels of an outrageous statement by an Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers studio executive, who told Deadline, “The endgame is to allow things to drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses.”

The greed, hubris and cruelty being weaponized are only further put into perspective by the key issues of the negotiations. Looking to increase streaming residuals for workers (in a world increasingly dependent on streaming) and to implement contractual protections against the prevalent threat of AI (which can be used to plagiarize writing or ape identities and voices, among other uses), the union was met with what Drescher says were claims of studio “poverty.”

“There was nothing there,” she said of the studios’ offer.

SAG chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland explained that the studio’s proposal around AI was, uh, not what the actors were after: “They proposed that our background actors 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 to be able to use it for the rest of eternity in any project they want with no consent and no compensation.”

SAG-AFTRA Calls Strike: Actors Join Writers after “Insulting” Offer from Studios