SAG-AFTRA and Hollywood’s biggest employers are at loggerheads over the industry’s high-profile plans to shift from line to stream.
However, the few things on the desk are not so difficult. The minor disagreement between labor and management that led to the SAG-AFTRA strike on July 13 was centered on financial and low-income Hollywood problems.
SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher has publicly vowed that getting more money to pay less across the board is the union’s biggest challenge. Talk to any regular player and it becomes clear why. Many of them say they were also drawn to work in a market that has paid the cheapest stars but pressured everyone else on paper.
The apparent anger at the show is mostly fueled by professional members, who have just found cases that were 10% to twenty or more higher than SAG-AFTRA’s minimum wage, due to the spread of lower classes. These are roles that only a few thousand {dollars} make a big difference in the actor’s account.
“We hope that people will understand that we are not a group of rich people, actors or writers. Everyone knows that most of us do not make a lot of money. It is a small minority,” advised Kathy Boettcher, actress and model To choose. Boettcher walked down the aisle on July 21 outside Fox Studios with her daughter, Sloan Boettcher, also a member of SAG-AFTRA. “They only cut wages and health benefits, after all they are very high [1%] he takes all the money and then cries. It’s not fair,” said Kathy Boettcher.
Andrew Leeds, an actor and writer who joined the Display Screen Actors Guild in 1992, isn’t interested in hearing “sorry is the best we can do” so often these days. Leeds made no secret of his annoyance at having to climb the financial mountain at this point in his career after spending several years performing and writing.
For the actors, “it was [once] It’s unusual that you only got a few, and now it’s a habit,” Leeds advised To choose on July 21 and decided outside the Fox Studios in West LA “No matter how long you’ve been doing this, no matter how talented you are, no matter what this is. You can be 65 years old, be an old actor, do a lot of TV, but you will still be given less.”
For neighbors, the last ten years have been a whirlwind of excitement as Netflix later Amazon, Hulu, Disney +, Apple TV +, Max, Paramount + and others have also boosted the need for streaming services. Budgets for episodic TV have changed significantly from the past, and the content has changed to something more unusual and interesting. However, since the ranking has stabilized, actors are seeing their real wages drop well below pre-2017 levels.
The minimum 5% one-year pay raise offered by the Alliance of Motion Image and Tv Producers will not cut it this time, SAG-AFTRA has confirmed. The original idea of the agreement was known as 15% in one year, but it was changed to 11% during the negotiation classes held in June and at the beginning of this month. Drescher reserved his views on what the 11% had shown in the press conference since the negotiations ended and the strike began. He spoke on July 18 in his digital interview with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont).
“The amount of real money is 5% less than what we do in 2020. We are not getting better. Inflation affects our daily lives, “said Drescher. “We have to agree to five percent. Less money than 2020 throughout 2026. Really? I don’t think so. It’s loopy. We do not experience it. We want at least 11%.
Funding for actors is more important than ever in an environment where residual income is almost non-existent. Social media has been abuzz with actors sharing examples of sentences that show how they get the residual income of the small and medium-sized groups in the collection.
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Leeds is famous for the fact that in the past, actors and producers of various kinds were eager to take on advertising jobs below the word less profitable than television or film because it was seen as a secondary release of media. However, now that everyone’s premium TV channels have changed to budget advertising (in SAG-AFTRA contract parlance), actors feel it’s time to change the scales. Similarly, SAG-AFTRA is placing union members within the Writers Guild of America, which began a strike on May 2.
The take-it-or-leave-it approach to expertise under frequent stops can be very interesting when considering the budgets of some advertising agencies. Mr. Leeds denies that developers can’t afford to buy more stocks because many of the parent companies have a lot of money and are throwing billions into these new platforms.
“If you’re making a $7 million donation, I don’t care where you’re making it. If you can’t raise $7 million, then you can’t afford to make it. It’s as simple as that,” Leeds said. “I’m not going to go out and buy one thing that I can’t afford, am I?”
What also annoys the actors is the game they always have in the departments of the studio companies. Actors often describe fighting with line producers and showrunners to ensure they are paid in installments or weeks, depending on how much their work is worth. Actors say that employers work hard to find ways to review the categories of work (guest, star, main actor, other guest artist, recurring collection, et al.) in detail within the SAG-AFTRA agreement, always with the aim of avoiding large payments and long periods of guaranteed pay.
Nickel-and-diming goes as far as travel, relocation and per diem bills are paid. Leeds said that it is tedious to fight small battles that may be too small for the brokers to deal with; they often make deals and change immediately with business managers. Leeds credits the SAG-AFTRA union for being a useful tool for her to identify what she needs to do in her job.
As an example of the erosion of the actor’s pay scale, Leeds describes two possible roles in a regular drama – one that requires little follow-up and the other that is essential to the plot of the episode. In most cases, in the Leeds profession, these roles are paid for at the same minimum price per stream, although one needs more from the player.
“You might have a job as a waiter, for example, who comes into a restaurant and says, ‘Is there anything I can get you?’ and that is the top of your job. After that there is a ‘great worker,’ who can be a killer by the way. They usually pay the same amount for the two roles. You are streaming they will solve it [major role] a group of musicians. Therefore, everyone keeps falling down. ”
Gamers who remember the boom in public TV also remember the high fees and residuals.
“When you give TV to CBS, NBC or ABC, you get your residual income and your salary,” said Kathy Boettcher.
As far as Leeds and others are concerned, streaming revenue cannot come from blue-collar Hollywood earnings.
“We are no longer working to undercut you, at least for our highest paid members,” Leeds said. “Now we have to protect our lowest income members because they have no choice but to tell the truth. It’s hard to get a job in the first place.”
Michael Edwin is a people person. A member of SAG since 1978, Edwin came here to pick the door of Amazon Studios in Culver Metropolis on July 14. He was honest, sweaty and frustrated as he described the loss of his money over 20 years.
“It didn’t start with streaming. They did it with CDs, they did it with DVDs, they did it with cable,” advised Edwin. To choose. “They say, ‘We don’t know what the business is. And we don’t know what we’re going to do.’ However, I see that what they have done, because of the growth of the businesses, is taking a toll on our wages. The real effect of this story is, most of the people you see here – we work 4 or 5, six times a year, even guest stars. And we are not always collectors. We are not people who earn the same amount of money.
Edwin did some simple math in his head. Once added, the numbers make it clear why they see a threat to the union’s decision only if regulators can’t figure out why union members want a double-digit increase in their minimum wage.
“At a [broadcast] community that I probably would have done, say in 2003 or so, over the life of those scraps, which are over 15-20 years, I make about $15,000 on those scraps,” Edwin said. “Now, that’s like $2,000 more, if that. This is because most of the community games are gone. It’s like you can’t do the job because you can’t do it well. ”