The Writers Guild of America reached an agreement Sunday with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.
The deal must be approved by the guild’s board and members before the strike officially ends and that could happen this week, the AP reports.
The Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists is still on strike for clear regulations around AI, an 11% increase in wages and larger contributions to the union’s health and pension plan.
“The AMPTP presented a deal that offered historic pay and residual increases, substantially higher caps on pension and health contributions, audition protections, shortened series option periods, and a groundbreaking AI proposal that protects actors’ digital likenesses for SAG-AFTRA members,” the AMPTP said in a statement.
Eric Goins is the SAG-AFTRA Atlanta local president and a member of the TV theatrical streaming negotiating committee.
Goins said SAG-AFTRA did not want to go on strike but said it was necessary to negotiate reasonable proposals that would protect and properly compensate SAG members.
“We have 160,000 members in SAG-AFTRA, approximately,” Goins said. “Somewhere between 13% and 14% of our members, qualify for health insurance every year. That means 84% of our membership does not make $26,470 a year, in this industry. To me that's staggering.”
The majority of SAG-AFTRA members are ordinary people who want to be compensated properly Goins explained.
As traditional television slips in popularity to streaming, revenue avenues for actors have decreased with fewer episodes in streaming series and residual structures based on subscriber numbers instead of viewership.
“Instead of 23 to 28, which would be traditional network TV, they're doing on average six to eight,” Goins said. “In addition to that, the residual structures, for those given shows are less than network television.”
Goins has been searching for a part-time job to provide for his family until the strike ends.
This is not uncommon, Ana Mackenzie is an actress who lives in North Georgia and she has worked as a waitress during the strikes.
She said she is fine working another job because she is hopeful a deal will be completed.
“The last time that SAG-AFTRA and WGA struck together was back in 1960 whenever we won residual pay, which was huge,” Mackenzie said. “I'm hopeful that we're going to make some huge strides and improvements in pay for fair pay for writers and actors.”
SAG-AFTRA last went on strike in 1960 when Ronald Regan was the president of the union.
