SAG, AFTRA approve contract proposals

Hollywood actors will seek higher minimum pay rates and an increase in contributions to their health and pension plans in the upcoming round of contract negotiations for work in film and prime-time television.

Those are the highlights from a package of bargaining proposals approved Sunday by the joint board of the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.

The proposals, culled from weeks of meetings with members of both unions nationwide, will form the framework for contract negotiations with the major studios that are scheduled to begin Sept. 27.

The actors unions, which previously focused heavily on issues surrounding new-media pay, will shift more attention in the upcoming talks to bread-and-butter topics. This focus is intended to shore up the unions' health and pension plans -- which have been hit by investment losses during the recession and by rising medical costs -- and to increase basic pay levels for journeyman actors, who have seen ongoing erosion in their incomes in recent years.

Although the actors' contracts don't expire until June, the unions opted to begin their negotiations early to avoid a standoff like the one that occurred two years ago between the studios and SAG, then under a different leadership.

SAG President Ken Howard and AFTRA National President Roberta Reardon will co-chair the negotiations, a departure from previous negotiations when the unions broke ranks and negotiated separate deals with the studios. SAG Executive Director David White and AFTRA National Executive Director Kim Roberts Hedgpeth will serve as the unions' co-lead negotiators, the unions said in a statement.

-- Richard Verrier

Comments

[Matt]

I hope that SAG and AFTRA will address the severe need for regulation in the hiring of Background Actors and stop exploiting this group with ridiculously high joining fees, no hiring regulation for Calling Services controlling the jobs, no requirements for joining a trade Union other than having the money (AFTRA) and other inequities. Such as SAG tiered structure for dues favoring those making over 2 million a year with one tenth the percentage of lower income earners.
Productions are required to hire only a small number of union background then they hire non union people to do the exact same job alongside union workers making less than half the money. Terrible morale for the employees told to get in line behind union members for meals.
These Union both need to let go of background actors and let them struggle with a weaker union covering all of the employees and end the exploitation of these hard working people by a sick industry resorting to cannibalism.