LOS ANGELES – The Screen Actors Guild of the United States (SAG-AFTRA) approved this Friday the new collective agreement agreed with the studios and streaming platforms and which must now be ratified by the workers to end the strike in Hollywood.
The union’s chief negotiator, Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, reported at a press conference that the agreement received the vote in favor of 86% of the SAG-AFTRA national executive.
The new three-year agreement, which contemplates improvements in working conditions, will be put to a vote by all unionized actors starting November 14, a referendum that will last until the first week of December.
“This victory is everyone’s victory. In this era of artificial intelligence technology, protections for performers mean the preservation of tens of thousands of jobs,” Crabtree-Ireland noted.
The agreement includes a general salary increase of 7%, plus another 4% increase planned for July 2024 and another 4% for July 2025.
The union also announced protections against artificial intelligence, one of the critical points of the almost four months of strike.
The agreement will only allow studios to use this technology to create “digital replicas” of actors if they have the consent of the performers and remunerate them for it, and the use of such replicas requires a “reasonably specific” description.
Regarding payments for the transmission of works on streaming platforms, the agreement includes a new fund of $40 million to compensate performers who have participated in productions that reach a certain level of success.
“There is more than $1 billion in new wage and benefit plan funding here,” Crabtree-Ireland stressed.
The president of the union, Fran Drescher, assured, for her part, that being in charge of the strike gave her the opportunity to turn the struggle of the interpreters into a “women’s movement.”
“I don’t have to emulate a man… I gave women the opportunity to see a woman be a leader by being herself,” Drescher said.
The announcement would be the light at the end of the tunnel for the film industry, which remained paralyzed for almost seven months due to the first joint strike in six decades of the screenwriters, who went on strike from May 2 to September 26, and the actors, who joined on July 14.
The actors can return to work as soon as possible, and after the announcement of the end of the strike, specialized media have reported that some film productions such as “Deadpool 3” or “Beetlejuice 2” will resume filming before the end of the year.
2023-11-11 03:09:13
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