Three years after their two historic strikes, the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists<\/b> and Writers Guild of America West<\/b> are leading L.A.\u2019s creative community by sealing long-term deals amid a challenging entertainment industry.<\/p>\n
The SAG-AFTRA board approved last Monday a four-year contract with studios and streamers to create stricter guardrails against artificial intelligence and merge the guild\u2019s two pension funds by 2028. The WGA, on the other hand, ratified its own four-year contract last month with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers to provide more than $320 million healthcare funds from studios. It also increased top streaming residuals from 50% to 70%, in addition to similar licensing restrictions on artificial intelligence. <\/p>\n
Sean Astin<\/b>, SAG-AFTRA president since last September, encouraged members to ratify the agreement. He said in a statement that the \u201cvery strong deal\u201d builds on what the guild gained in 2023, when it held a prolonged strike with the writer\u2019s guild to boost streaming residuals and advocate for protections against artificial intelligence. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt is a structural agreement that confronts the realities of streaming economics, artificial intelligence, digital identity, pension stability, data transparency and the increasingly fragmented nature of employment in our business,\u201d Astin said. \u201cI am proud and pleased to send it to the membership with my full support for ratification.\u201d<\/p>\n
WGA West President Michele Mulroney<\/b> also commented on the progress since 2023. The new health plan increased 3.25% in health contribution rate on May 2 and raised health contribution caps.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the face of industry contraction and runaway healthcare cost inflation, writers were able to secure a contract that returns our Health Fund to a sustainable path and builds on gains from the 2023 strike,\u201d Mulroney said.<\/p>\n
The new contracts attracted controversy, however. WGA\u2019s proposed healthcare caps, which will rise to $400,000 by 2028, will raise the eligibility threshold. The proposed merger of retirement funds at SAG-AFTRA also led some SAG pension beneficiaries to believe that it will sap the fund. <\/p>\n
Peter Antico<\/b>, former candidate for secretary-treasurer at the union, told Variety that the merger is \u201cvery detrimental to SAG and it bails out AFTRA\u2019s retirement fund.\u201d The ballots for the agreement will be due by June 4.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Three years after their two historic strikes, the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists and…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":804594,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[1582,276,2961,224,5337,42859],"class_list":{"0":"post-804593","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-la","11":"tag-los-angeles","12":"tag-losangeles","13":"tag-sag-aftra"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116594430864290280","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=804593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804593\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/804594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=804593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=804593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=804593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}