Current Events > Actors' union to have members vote on authorizing a strike

(+) Yeah! (+)

SAG-AFTRA announced Wednesday that it will hold a strike authorization vote as it seeks to get its ducks in a row ahead of June 7 negotiations with the major studios.

The vote does not mean that the performers union will necessarily join the Writers Guild of America on the picket lines after its contract expires on June 30. In a press release, the union said its negotiating committee decided that a strike authorization would provide maximum bargaining leverage for the talks.

We must get all our ducks in a row should the need present itself, SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher said in the release. The prospect of a strike is not a first option, but a last resort. As my dad always says, Better to have and not need than to need and not have!

The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents the studios, declined to comment.
In 2017, the performers union threatened to call a strike authorization vote as talks got close to the deadline. At the time, the union said that the AMPTP was seeking outrageous rollbacks. The two sides ultimately reached a deal without the guild having to call the vote.

SAG-AFTRA also obtained a strike authorization during negotiations on the 2018 TV animation contract. In that case, more than 98% of the voting members approved the authorization, and the parties reached a deal two months later.

This time around, there will be only three weeks between the beginning of negotiations and the June 30 contract expiration. Taking a strike authorization vote now may be a way to gain leverage without having to lose time at the bargaining table.

Drescher has appeared on the WGA picket lines, and has expressed her support for the writers strike, which began on May 2. But she stirred controversy among some of her membership last week when she suggested, to Deadline, that SAG-AFTRA and the WGA have different issues.

I dont think whats very important to writers and Im a writer too in the WGA is the kind of stuff that were going after, Drescher said. Although Im very empathic for their needs to be honored, I feel like our conversation is going to be very different. And I feel very hopeful that maybe we wont get to this point.

Glad I basically just watch Youtube

Fran Drescher is head of the SAG? In a million years I never would've guessed

Glad I basically just watch anime

More strikes more strikes

The United States needs a general strike

I want a nurse, pilot, railroad and teacher's strike now

Fran Drescher is head of the SAG? In a million years I never would've guessed

The Directors Guild of America is continuing its negotiations with the AMPTP, as companies hope to get a deal that could play a role in ending the two-week-old writers strike.
Meanwhile, the Writers Guild of America told members Monday that the guild is winning the PR war against the studios, as members share their stories in the media.
It seems the whole world is on our side, wrote Lisa Takeuchi Cullen, a WGA East vice president, in an email to members titled Our Momentum Grows. Members individual stories of our broken system of getting by on ten weeks of work a year, of residual checks amounting to pennies are resonating with the public. They understand we are losing out on the middle-class American Dream. We are not the elite. We are just like them. We are them.

SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher

This is how I felt when I learned Laura Ingalls was head of the SAG.

I'm fine with them striking. And I hope it is a perpetual strike that never ends, with neither side giving in, personally. Same with the Writers' Strike.

Maybe we can finally end up with them going back to the old model of where there were only a few movies/shows coming out that are much better quality-controlled compared to mass amounts of garbage that have been coming out in recent years with the push for just content in terms of quantity instead of quality and the barriers to entry that were taken down via new technology allowing anyone and everyone to release new shows/movies if they so choose.

Huh, well that explains what she's been up to all this time.

Do you think there is not still a ton of good tv shows and movies?

Do you think there is not still a ton of good tv shows and movies?

There are a number of them, I'll admit; not a ton, though. However, I am fine losing out on the "good" if it means getting rid of the excessive amounts of "bad," personally.

What if you just dont watch it

Watch Amazon and Disney still try to plow through and film certain programs like they did with Rings of Power and Andor Seasons 2 somehow even though both actors and writers would be striking now.

Landlords should unionize

Landlords should unionize and strike while theyre at it!

I dont think whats very important to writers and Im a writer too in the WGA is the kind of stuff that were going after,

i mean thats why the student loan debt wasnt passed

conservative group is against welfare to help college students with debt.

only welfare for corporations and big farm.