Hollywood’s SAG-Aftra union will vote on Thursday morning on whether to strike after failing to reach a new deal with the entity that represents major studios and steaming services.
(Bloomberg) — Hollywood’s SAG-Aftra union will vote on Thursday morning on whether to strike after failing to reach a new deal with the entity that represents major studios and steaming services.
Talks with the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers, which represents major companies from Amazon.com Inc. and Netflix Inc. to Sony Group Corp. and Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. failed to reach an agreement after four weeks of bargaining over key issues, the union said in a statement. The AMPTP is unwilling to offer a fair deal on key issues, it said.
In a separate statement, the AMPTP said it is disappointed that SAG-Aftra has decided to walk away from negotiations, and dismissed its offer that included pay and residual increases.
With the SAG-Aftra union’s negotiating committee unanimously recommending a strike, it’s now up to its national board to vote on whether to proceed. The union represents 160,000 actors, meaning Hollywood’s labor issues would ripple widely if a strike were to go ahead.
SAG-Aftra’s contract expired at the end of June, and both sides extended it until July 12. The actors voted to authorize a strike last month. Talks with studios collapsed over disagreements on pay, benefits and the use of artificial intelligence.
The studios and labor have been tussling over wages, staffing, how streaming royalties are shared as well as the potential use of artificial intelligence, which is viewed by unions as a potential job destroyer. The Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers, representing Netflix Inc., Walt Disney Co. and other studios, reached a new deal last month with the Directors Guild of America, suggesting the differences aren’t insurmountable.
The deal between the studios and the directors included a wage increase of 5% in the first year, as well as an agreement that artificial intelligence would not replace its members. Union officials also said they won increases in pay from streaming services, including for foreign residuals and reality TV.
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