George Clooney, Ben Affleck, Scarlett Johansson and a gaggle of different A-listers gave a proposal to SAG-AFTRA management on Tuesday, which they hoped would assist finish the 98-day actors strike.
However the proposal was rejected on Wednesday by the union’s negotiating committee, which is sticking to the calls for it has spelled out over many weeks of negotiations.
To grasp why, it’d assist to delve extra deeply into the proposal.
There are two most important components: a dues enhance on high-earning actors and a change in residuals to make sure that low-earning actors receives a commission first.
Dues Enhance
Beneath present guidelines, SAG-AFTRA members pay $231.96 in base dues every year, plus 1.575% of coated earnings as much as $1 million. The A-listers’ proposal would get rid of that cap, subjecting all coated actor earnings to the 1.575% evaluation.
Clooney has estimated that will generate $50 million a 12 months. (That sounds excessive, as it might suggest that actors earn about $3.2 billion a 12 months above the cap, which is the equal of about 160 actors averaging $21 million a 12 months, which is a attain.)
Extra to the purpose, the main downside with that is that the SAG-AFTRA strike just isn’t about dues. SAG-AFTRA is on strike to extend actors’ earnings, to not enhance the funding of the union. The 2 issues will not be interchangeable. A rise in union dues couldn’t offset funds owed by studios to actors or to the actors’ pension and well being funds.
Dues are additionally irrelevant to the collective bargaining course of, as they don’t seem to be topic to negotiation between the union and the Alliance of Movement Image and Tv Producers. They’re set by the SAG-AFTRA Nationwide Board, which must undertake a separate course of, which might contain promoting high-earning actors on the thought of a paying extra to the union.
And whereas SAG-AFTRA would seemingly discover a use for any extra cash, the union just isn’t affected by a decline in dues. The union reported receiving $127 million final fiscal 12 months, a major enhance from the 12 months prior as manufacturing rebounded to pre-pandemic ranges.
Fran Drescher, the president of SAG-AFTRA, defined that dues can’t be used to fund the pension and well being plans in an Instagram video launched Thursday evening.
“That’s sort of apples and oranges,” she defined. And enhance in dues, she mentioned, “doesn’t influence the contract that we’re putting over in any respect.”
‘Backside-Up’ Residual Construction
The group additionally proposes a residual construction through which the lowest-earning actors could be paid first, and the very best earners would get residuals final.
This seems to confuse residuals with revenue participation. A-list actors can negotiate a proportion of income, that are paid out on the backend in a “waterfall” system. As extra income are available in, the cash begins to circulate additional down, so it makes a giant distinction the place an actor is positioned within the waterfall.
That isn’t how residuals work. Residuals are paid out on the identical time to everyone who’s owed them. Each time a venture is bought to a brand new medium, or re-aired on TV, the union contracts spell out precisely who’s owed what. Residuals don’t have anything to do with income. There isn’t any “waterfall,” and it doesn’t matter the place an actor is positioned.
Drescher additionally addressed the residual proposal in her Instagram video.
“That was vetted by our very skilled union contract workers, negotiators and legal professionals, they usually mentioned that it sadly doesn’t maintain water,” she mentioned. “Frankly it is a very nuanced home of playing cards.”
In different phrases, neither of those proposals addresses the issues which have saved actors on strike for 98 days. These points are: a union proposal to pay actors a share of streaming income, a rise in minimums to maintain tempo with inflation, and rules on synthetic intelligence.
The proposals seem like motivated by a honest need to deliver an finish to the strike, coupled with a way of noblesse oblige, suggesting that high-earning actors ought to sacrifice to succeed in that decision.
From the standpoint of the SAG-AFTRA Negotiating Committee, nevertheless, the proposal seems to weaken the sense of unity and dedication to the committee’s proposals — which is essential to reaching the absolute best deal. It additionally means that high-earning actors ought to one way or the other step in to pay for issues that the studios have refused to pay for — thereby lessening the strain on the studios to pony up.
Requested what A-list actors may do to assist attain a decision, one individual near the talks instructed that they be a part of a picket line.