A group of more than 400 actors — including Oscar winners Meryl Streep, Jennifer Lawrence and Rami Malek — are urging SAG-AFTRA leaders to take a harder line as contract talks reach a critical point.
The members sent an internal letter Tuesday to the union’s negotiating committee and the leadership. They emphasized that “we are prepared to strike if it comes to that.”
“And we are concerned by the idea that SAG-AFTRA members may be ready to make sacrifices that leadership is not,” they continued.
The contract expires on Friday, and the leadership has the power to call a strike as soon as Saturday if no agreement is reached.
In the letter, the members urged their negotiators not to settle for anything less than a “transformative deal.”
“This is not a moment to meet in the middle, and it’s not an exaggeration to say that the eyes of history are on all of us,” they wrote. “We ask that you push for all the change we need and protections we deserve and make history doing it. If you are not able to get all the way there, we ask that you use the power given to you by us, the membership, and join the WGA on the picket lines. For our union and its future, this is our moment. We hope that, on our behalf, you will meet that moment and not miss it.”
Fran Drescher, the president of the union, appeared in a video on Saturday with Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, the chief negotiator, in which she said that the talks had been “extremely productive.” That appeared to suggest that a deal was at hand, though the two sides remain at odds on many key issues.
The video met with some pushback, as some members felt that it appeared leadership was ready to settle for too little.
The signatories of the letter also include Glenn Close, Ben Stiller, Laura Linney, Julia Louis Dreyfus, Elliot Page, Amy Poehler, Quinta Brunson, Liam Neeson, Emmy Rossum, Amy Schumer, Neil Patrick Harris, Constance Wu, Billy Eichner, Paul Walter Hauser, John Slattery, and Natasha Lyonne, among others. (See the full list here.)
SAG-AFTRA tends to have more dissenting voices than the other creative guilds, especially during contract ratification votes. The union also has a tradition of divisive internal politics, though the two factions — Membership First and Unite for Strength — have joined to endorse a “unity slate,” with Drescher seeking another term as president and Joely Fisher seeking another term as secretary-treasurer.
Here is the full text of the letter:
Dear SAG-AFTRA Leadership and Negotiating Committee,
Thank you for your hard work and your leadership navigating through this difficult negotiation in a truly unprecedented time. As SAG-AFTRA members, we’ve been impressed over the last few months by how our leadership outlined the unique stakes of the negotiations and the need for a realignment in our industry. We were glad to see SAG-AFTRA lead the way among the guilds in identifying AI as a threat to our livelihoods that must be addressed right now, a “game changer.” We felt as though you understood how wildly our pay and our residuals have been undermined, how long we’re being held between seasons. We’ve been filled with pride watching the union come together and deliver such an incredibly strong strike authorization vote.
But solidarity demands honesty, and we need to make clear our resolve. A strike brings incredible hardships to so many, and no one wants it. But we are prepared to strike if it comes to that. And we are concerned by the idea that SAG-AFTRA members may be ready to make sacrifices that leadership is not. We hope you’ve heard the message from us: This is an unprecedented inflection point in our industry, and what might be considered a good deal in any other years is simply not enough. We feel that our wages, our craft, our creative freedom, and the power of our union have all been undermined in the last decade. We need to reverse those trajectories. With inflation and continued growth in streaming, we need a seismic realignment of our minimum pay and new media residuals, our exclusivity carveouts, and other terms. We also think it’s absolutely vital that the deal restore dignity to the casting process by regulating how self-tapes are used. This is an enormous problem for working class actors. And especially as regards Artificial Intelligence, we do not believe that SAG-AFTRA members can afford to make halfway gains in anticipation that more will be coming in three years, and we think it is absolutely vital that this negotiation protects not just our likenesses, but makes sure we are well compensated when any of our work is used to train AI. We want you to know that we would rather go on strike than compromise on these fundamental points, and we believe that, if we settle for a less than transformative deal, the future of our union and our craft will be undermined, and SAG-AFTRA will enter the next negotiation with drastically reduced leverage.
This is not a moment to meet in the middle, and it’s not an exaggeration to say that the eyes of history are on all of us. We ask that you push for all the change we need and protections we deserve and make history doing it. If you are not able to get all the way there, we ask that you use the power given to you by us, the membership, and join the WGA on the picket lines. For our union and its future, this is our moment. We hope that, on our behalf, you will meet that moment and not miss it.
