SAG on verge of striking as pressure on Hollywood increases

The Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Radio and Television Artists (SAG-AFTRA-AFTRA) nearly went on strike last night in solidarity with the Writer Guild of America’s (WGA) multi-month long strike action against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) for increasingly unfavourable conditions for the creatives behind films and TV shows in the US.

The SAG-AFTRA represents over 160,000 actors in the US. On Tuesday night, they prepared for strike action over losing out on money through residuals in the age of streaming. The subscription business model of streaming services like Netflix, which have taken over Hollywood, has made it increasingly difficult to fund a sustainable lifestyle as an actor, they say.

The complaints are similarly echoed by the WGA who have been on strike since 2 May. The WGA are concerned about the way streaming services have changed residual earnings, as well as the continued shrinking of contracts and potential of looking to AI for content.

A last-minute intervention was agreed upon between the SAG-AFTRA and federal mediators, but there is doubt that a deal will be made before the current union contract expires on Wednesday evening.

“We are committed to the negotiating process and will explore and exhaust every possible opportunity to make a deal, however we are not confident that the employers have any intention of bargaining toward an agreement,” the SAG-AFTRA said in a statement on Tuesday night.

Actors and writers against Hollywood money-men

If the SAG-AFTRA does strike, it will be the first time that both the SAG-AFTRA and the WGA will strike concurrently since 1960. Back then, Ronald Reagan was the president of SAG-AFTRA, two decades before he became US President.

The WGA strike has already impeded production on many films and TV shows in Hollywood. A dual strike including the actors union will effectively stall every production that is yet to film in the country.

“We condemn the tactic outlined in today’s inaccurate Variety piece naming the CEOs of several entertainment conglomerates as the force behind the request for mediation; information that was leaked to the press by the CEOs and their ‘anonymous sources’ before our negotiators were even told of the request for mediation. The AMPTP has abused our trust and damaged the respect we have for them in this process. We will not be manipulated by this cynical ploy to engineer an extension when the companies have had more than enough time to make a fair deal,” the SAG-AFTRA statement continued.

“SAG-AFTRA represents performers. We are here to get a deal that ensures our members can earn a living wage in our expansive industry we help make possible with our work. The AMPTP can make this happen at any time. They know what our members need and when they bring that to the table, we will be listening, but it’s important to know — time is running out.”

Similar concerns across the pond

Over in the UK, the Writers Guild of Great Britain (WGGB) has published a new policy position titled ‘Writers and AI’ in response to concerns about the way the market may try and replace creatives with artificial intelligence.

In response to a WGGB survey, 65% of respondents said they “believed that the increased use of AI will reduce their income from writing”, while 61% were “worried that AI could replace jobs in their craft areas.”

Similarly, an impact assessment by OpenAI indicated that the technology created a greater risk — at 68.8% — to writers than most fields of work. A report by KPMG, ‘Generative AI and the UK Labour Market’, estimates that 43% of the tasks associated with writing could be automated.

The concerns of WGGB echo one of the tenets that the WGA went on strike over in the US. While the WGGB does accept that AI may have some benefits “if used in an ethical, transparent and responsible way” and that current technology is not yet able to fully mimic human writing, the union believes that “AI will ever be able to match the originality, authenticity, enthusiasm and humanity that professional writers put into their storytelling.”

As such, the WGGB’s position is that authors must express direct permission for their work to be used by AI, that content created by AI is always labelled as such, that human content and AI uses is adequately credited, and for copyright laws to not except AI data mining, among other requirements.

“There have been some incredible advancements in AI, but as with any new technology we need to weigh the risks against the benefits and ensure that the speed of development does not outpace or derail the protections that writers and the wider creative workforce rely upon to make a living,” WGGB Deputy General Secretary Lesley Gannon said.