Major Hollywood studios have finally reached a new pay agreement with the main US actors union, the Screen Actors Guild, after more than a year of increasingly acrimonious negotiations – but not everyone is happy with the results.
The threat of strike action seemed to be looming with the SAG unable to reach a compromise with the studios, until a two year deal covering prime time television shows and movies was finally struck. The Guild claims that the minimum pay rate for actors has been raised three percent by the new deal, as part of a package of improvements costing over one hundred million dollars. Just over a third of the union’s one hundred and twenty thousand members voted, with seventy eight percent agreeing to the new contract, but with what was a key issue in the negotiations – pay increase for screenings on the internet – apparently being completely ignored, some members are feeling ripped off by their union. The Guild’s own President, Alan Rosenberg described the new contract as being “devastatingly unsatisfactory” and said that members must “ready themselves for the battle ahead” when negotiations once more go on the table in 2011. The internet argument has been costly for the union, leading to a split with another actor’s union, Aftra, which settled the issue last year and as a result has seen SAG’s members losing more and more work to their rival. Despite Rosenberg’s misgivings, chief negotiator John McGuire insisted the new contract represented “a solid deal”.
