[ad_1]
George ClooneyBen Affleck, Scarlett Johansson and a group of other celebrities gave a proposal to SAG-AFTRA leadership on Tuesday, which they hoped would help end the 98-day actors’ strike.
But the proposal was rejected Wednesday by the union’s bargaining committee, which is sticking to demands it has laid out over many weeks of negotiations.
To understand why, it might be useful to delve deeper into the proposal.
There are two main elements: an increase in fees for high-income actors and a change in residuals to ensure that low-income actors are paid first.
Increase in quotas
Under current rules, SAG-AFTRA members pay $231.96 in base dues each year, plus 1.575% of covered earnings up to $1 million. The A-listers’ proposal would eliminate that limit, subjecting all earnings of covered actors to the 1.575% assessment.
Clooney has estimated that would generate $50 million a year. (That sounds high, since it would imply that actors earn about $3.2 billion a year above the cap, which is equivalent to about 160 actors averaging $21 million a year. what is a scope.)
More to the point, the main problem with this is that the SAG-AFTRA strike is not about dues. SAG-AFTRA is striking to increase actors’ income, not to increase union funding. The two things are not interchangeable. An increase in union dues could not offset payments that studios owe to actors or to actors’ pension and health care funds.
Dues are also irrelevant to the collective bargaining process, as they are not subject to negotiation between the union and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. They are set by the SAG-AFTRA National Board, which would have to undertake a separate process, which would involve selling high-earning actors on the idea of paying more to the union.
And while SAG-AFTRA would likely find use for any additional money, the union is not suffering from a decrease in dues. The union reported receiving $127 million last fiscal year, a significant increase from the previous year, as production recovered to pre-pandemic levels.
Fran Drescher, president of SAG-AFTRA, explained that dues cannot be used to fund pension and health plans in a Instagram video released Thursday night.
“That’s kind of apples and oranges,” he explained. And the dues increase, she said, “doesn’t affect the contract we’re striking for at all.”
Residual ‘bottom-up’ structure
The group also proposes a residual structure in which the lowest-earning actors would receive their payments first and those earning the most would receive residuals last.
This seems to confuse residuals with profit sharing. Top players can negotiate a percentage of the profits, which are paid on the backend in a “waterfall” system. As more profits come in, money starts to flow further down, so it makes a big difference where an actor falls in the waterfall.
That’s not how waste works. Residues are paid at the same time to everyone who owes them. Every time a project is sold to a new outlet or rebroadcast on television, union contracts detail exactly who is owed what. Waste has nothing to do with profits. There is no “waterfall” and it doesn’t matter where the actor is.
Drescher also addressed the residual proposal in his Instagram video.
“That was looked at by our experienced union contract staff, negotiators and attorneys, and they said it unfortunately doesn’t hold water,” he said. “Frankly, this is a very nuanced house of cards.”
In other words, none of these proposals address the issues that have kept actors on strike for 98 days. Those issues are: a union proposal to pay actors a portion of streaming revenue, an increase in minimums to keep pace with inflation, and regulations on artificial intelligence.
The proposals appear to be motivated by a sincere desire to end the strike, coupled with a feeling of nobility obligesuggesting that high-income actors would have to sacrifice to achieve that resolution.
However, from the point of view of the SAG-AFTRA Negotiating Committee, the proposal appears to weaken the sense of unity and commitment to the committee’s proposals, which is key to reaching the best possible agreement. It also suggests that high-earning actors should somehow step in to pay for things that studios have refused to pay for, thus easing pressure on studios to come up with money.
When asked what A-list actors could do to help reach a resolution, a person close to the talks suggested they join a picket line.
[ad_2]
Source link
