As tens of thousands of actors enter their fifth day of strike action against Hollywood studios, the two sides have shown no signs of returning to the bargaining table — and are still exchanging barbed messages emphasizing whether how far they are
On Monday night, the leadership of SAG-AFTRA, the actors’ union, sent a 12-page memo to members laying out their demands and the studios’ counterproposals. They “remain aloof from the most critical issues that affect the very survival of our profession,” the note said.
“We marched ahead because they deliberately dragged their feet,” it continued.
The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, the organization that bargains on behalf of the studios, responded with a note to the news media arguing that the message from the union “deliberately distorts” the offers it has made.
“A strike is not the outcome we want,” the alliance said. “For SAG-AFTRA to insist that we are not meeting the needs of its membership is disingenuous.”
Thousands of Hollywood actors went on strike Friday after failing to reach new contracts with major studios, including legacy companies like Paramount, Universal and Disney, and tech giants like Netflix, Amazon and Apple.
The actors joined 11,500 screenwriters who went on strike 78 days ago, marking the first time two unions have walked out at the same time since 1960. The writers have not returned to the bargaining table in studio since their negotiations broke down in early May.
The SAG-AFTRA memo said the two sides remained far apart on several key issues, including compensation, guardrails against artificial intelligence and health care and pension costs.
The union leadership said they asked for an 11 percent wage increase in the first year of the new contract; the studios came back with an offer of 5 percent, they said.
When it comes to artificial intelligence, union leaders said they argued for some provisions to protect them “when a ‘digital replica’ is created or our performance is altered using AI”
They said the studio alliance “failed to address many important concerns, leaving the main performers and background actors vulnerable to having much of their work replaced by digital replicas.”
The studios said the union’s note to its members “does not include proposals offered verbally” during negotiations, and that its total package is worth more than $1 billion in wage increases, improvements to residuals (a type of royalty) and health care contributions .
Regarding artificial intelligence, the studios said they offered a “groundbreaking proposal, which protects the digital likenesses of performers, including a requirement for the consent of the performer for the creation and use of digital replicas or for digital transformations of a performance.”
Union leadership sent a chart laying out each proposal and the studios’ response. Of more than two dozen proposals, the studio’s response boiled down to a one-word response, according to the union: “Rejected.”
“So who makes a T-Shirt that says ‘Rejected?'” actress Senta Moses posted on Twitter.
“This is why we are on strike,” the union said in a statement. “AMPTP thought we would give up, but the will of our membership has never been stronger. We have the resolve and unity needed to defend our rights.”
