Reprieve: Writers and Actors Live to Fight Another Day
Pretty good year for unions, even those representing the most esoteric of our fellow workers: actors and writers.
It is difficult to really quantify the contributions of Writers Guild of America (WGA) and the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA), so it is to the credit of their representative negotiators that they scored the wins they did in this long strike year.
Truth is, producers of movies and television, and publishers of books, don’t really need “us” anymore. As the WGA contract neared its end earlier this year, it appeared that artificial intelligence had arrived, and the entire oeuvre and human contribution in words could be scraped for meaning, tone, style, and regurgitated in ways at least as vibrant as those available through any new human contributor (writer).
About half way through 2023, it became apparent that AI was not yet as powerful as initially feared, and that probably saved the WGA and the SAG-AFTRA membership until next contract (May 1, 2026 for the WGA). We are on life support, but in the recent renegotation WGA members won the following:
Better pay guarantees: $4,000 (minimum) per week for TV work, $17,000 per week for feature films
Better residuals, including pay for products streaming on Netflix and Hulu and other services
15% increase in employer contributions to WGA-provided health insurance
Promises to increase “diversity” in writer’s rooms, including increased opportunities for “under-represented writers”, whatever that means (virtually all writers being in that category)
The WGA strike lasted for 101 days.
SAG-AFTRA members are faced with exactly the same future as WGA members. (Did you ever see Soylent Green? Baked just right, even the lowest cut of actor tastes just fine!) People can now be sampled and their likenesses and behaviors (acting skills) stamped as if they are real human beings, and as needed. It is a producer’s dream come true, a director’s fantasy. The new contract is a reprieve for actors, likely delaying their elimination until 2026. Such labor contracts are typically good for three years, and the last SAG contract expired on June 30, 2023.
SAG-AFTRA managed to gain these advantages:
2.5% wage increase, so TV actors are now guaranteed $1,050 per day, and $3,488 per week for film work (minimums)
Residuals for work streamed for more than 90 days (streamed for a full year, under the previous contract)
Increased contributions from employers to health plans
Commitment to increased diversity in casting, more opportunities for under-represented actors
See the previous edition for an overview of the employers referenced in the WGA and SAG-AFTRA negotiations.
That diversity thing, with regard to the casting of film and TV products, has been a point of controversy among everyone but “under-represented” actors. At issue is the idea of “cultural appropriation”, and in some cases historical accuracy. Casting can feel a little like social engineering, when well-established figures in history or fiction are “re-represented” as someting other than how they were created.
Does that help? Who does that help?
Why not just create new stories, with new characters, in ways flavored to whatever the creators of these things might want?
We humans seem to have exhausted our capacity to invent anything meaningfully new. AI is getting better every day.
It’ll come up with something for us.