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, Ben Affleck, 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.
Extra from Selection
To know why, it’d assist to delve extra deeply into the proposal.
There are two foremost 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 Improve
Underneath present guidelines, SAG-AFTRA members pay $231.96 in base dues annually, plus 1.575% of coated earnings as much as $1 million. The A-listers’ proposal would eradicate that cap, subjecting all coated actor earnings to the 1.575% evaluation.
Clooney has estimated that may generate $50 million a 12 months. (That sounds excessive, as it might indicate 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 reach.)
Extra to the purpose, the foremost downside with that is that the SAG-AFTRA strike shouldn’t be about dues. SAG-AFTRA is on strike to extend actors’ revenue, to not enhance the funding of the union. The 2 issues aren’t 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 probably discover a use for any further cash, the union shouldn’t be 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 night time.
“That’s form of apples and oranges,” she defined. And enhance in dues, she stated, “doesn’t impression the contract that we’re putting over in any way.”
‘Backside-Up’ Residual Construction
The group additionally proposes a residual construction wherein the lowest-earning actors can 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 share of earnings, that are paid out on the backend in a “waterfall” system. As extra earnings are available, 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 all people who’s owed them. Each time a challenge is offered 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 earnings. 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 employees, negotiators and attorneys, and so they stated that it sadly doesn’t maintain water,” she stated. “Frankly this can be 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 want to carry an finish to the strike, coupled with a way of noblesse oblige, suggesting that high-earning actors ought to sacrifice to achieve that decision.
From the standpoint of the SAG-AFTRA Negotiating Committee, nonetheless, 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 part of a picket line.
VIP+ Webinar Replay: Hollywood on Strike — What’s Next?
Better of Selection
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