Members of SAG-AFTRA voted by a wide margin to give their leaders authority to call a strike even before negotiations have begun with the major studios.
As writers enter their sixth week of a strike, the season of labor discontent in Hollywood doesn’t appear to be winding down.
The Directors Guild of America, one of three unions seeking new contracts from the major studios, on Saturday announced that it had a “historic” deal for increased pay and conditions, with some significant gains in streaming compensation and other areas.
But the Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA quickly poured cold water on any notion that the DGA pact with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers would apply to them. This was not like 15 years ago, they suggested, when a deal negotiated by the directors’ union created a template to end the previous writers’ strike.
“The AMPTP will not be able to negotiate a deal for writers with anyone but us,” the WGA said in a message to its members on Sunday.
“Our bargaining strategy has never relied upon nor been dependent on the outcome or status of any other union’s negotiations, nor do we subscribe to the philosophy that the terms of deals made with other unions bind us,” Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, SAG-AFTRA’s national executive director and chief negotiator, said in a statement Sunday.
And, on Monday night, SAG-AFTRA announced that its members have voted overwhelmingly (by a 98% margin) to give their leaders authority to call a strike if they can’t negotiate a new contract — even before negotiations are scheduled to begin Wednesday. The vote means the union’s leaders could call a strike after June 30, when their current contract expires, if no deal is reached by then.
