SAG-AFTRA
Negotiations over the next three-year contract for Hollywood’s largest union concluded with renewed optimism after a weekend of talks on Sunday – although no agreement has yet been reached.
After a weekend of back and forth over SAG-AFTRA’s next TV/theatre agreement, the union and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers do not yet have a date for returning to formal negotiations. Still, the talks are said to have been productive: Several studio insiders described the weekend meetings as a positive step, even if both sides have not yet clarified all contract points, including the union’s attempt to secure further compensation from streaming work and AI regulations.
The turn comes after studios made it clear to union leadership last week that their summer 2024 movie theater plans will almost certainly be blown up if there is no sign of a resolution by the first week of November or even as early as November 1st. In that case, talks could be broken off by the end of the year, a sobering prospect for everyone involved, say studio insiders.
The union presented its latest responses to the studio on Saturday, while some discussions took place between representatives of the two parties on Sunday, without the direct involvement of the studio’s top executives who were involved in previous bargaining sessions the previous week.
Expectations are high across the industry that this latest series of negotiation dates could lead to a tentative deal. The union and management returned to the bargaining table on Tuesday, October 24, and have since exchanged proposals on issues including the union’s attempt to improve streaming compensation for its members and significantly raise the wage floor to take recent inflation into account.
At the start of the final weekend of negotiations, more than several thousand members of SAG-AFTRA signed a letter in support of union leadership, urging the union side to move forward and not compromise in the name of ending the strike: “As hard as that is, that means We would rather remain on strike than get a bad deal,” said the letter, released Thursday and signed by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Cynthia Nixon, Leslie Odom Jr., Demi Moore, Jon Hamm and others.
The statement of support came after a separate group of actors, frustrated with the direction of negotiations, submitted a draft of another letter that was critical of SAG-AFTRA leadership. Ultimately, that group decided not to publish its message when the union returned to the negotiating table with the studios on October 24.
Kim Masters contributed to this report.