SAG-AFTRA and Hollywood’s largest employers are wrestling over complicated contract proposals in a business turned inside-out by the transition from linear to streaming.
But some of what’s on the table isn’t so complicated. Some of the discord between labor and management that led SAG-AFTRA to go on strike on July 13 is rooted in money and the hard reality of making minimum rates in Hollywood.
SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher has vowed publicly that securing a hefty increase in minimum pay rates across the board is a deal-breaker issue for the union. Talk to any established working actor and it becomes clear why. Most of them say they’ve been dragged back to working for scale in a marketplace that has paid high-wattage stars record fees but put the squeeze on everyone else down the call sheet.
The palpable anger on picket lines is fueled in large part by experienced union members, who once routinely secured fees that were 10% to 20% or more above SAG-AFTRA minimum, for a range of lower-level job categories. These are the roles where a few thousand dollars make a big difference in an actor’s bank account.
“Hopefully people are now understanding that we’re not a bunch of rich, pampered actors or writers. We all know that most of us don’t make much money. It’s a small handful,” Kathy Boettcher, an actor and model, told Variety. Boettcher walked the line July 21 outside Fox Studios with her daughter, Sloan Boettcher, also a SAG-AFTRA member. “They continue to cut wages and health benefits, and then the top [1%] takes all the money and then cries foul. It’s just not right,” Kathy Boettcher said.
Andrew Leeds, an actor and writer who joined the Screen Actors Guild in 1992, is tired of hearing “sorry that’s the best we can do” so often these days. Leeds didn’t hide his exasperation at facing an uphill climb financially at this stage in his career after investing so many years in acting and writing.
For actors, “it was [once] rare that you just got the minimum, and now it is the norm,” Leeds told Variety on July 21 while picketing outside Fox Studios in West L.A. “No matter how long you’ve been doing this, no matter how much experience you have, no matter any of those things. You could be 65 years old, be a veteran actor, done hundreds of hours of television, you will still be offered the minimum.”
For the creative community, the past decade has been an exciting whirlwind as Netflix and then Amazon, Hulu, Disney+, Apple TV+, Max, Paramount+ and others revved up demand for streaming content. Budgets for episodic TV became enormous by past standards, and content became more distinctive and more adventurous. But now that streaming has become the new normal, actors feel their real-world wages have slipped well below pre-2017 levels.
The 5% year-one minimums hike that the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers has offered will not cut it this time around, SAG-AFTRA has asserted. The union’s initial proposal called for a 15% bump in year one, but that was trimmed to 11% in the bargaining sessions held in June and earlier this month. Drescher has kept the focus on the 11% figure in media appearances since talks broke down and the strike began. She addressed it on July 18 in her virtual conversation with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont).
“A 5% bump in real money is less than we were making in 2020. We don’t get a cost-of-living increase. Inflation impacts our daily lives,” Drescher said. “They want us to agree to 5%. Less money than 2020 all the way through 2026. Really? I don’t think so. That’s crazy. We’re not going to stand for it. We need at least 11%.”
The upfront money paid to working actors is more vital than ever in an environment where streaming residuals are virtually nonexistant. Social media has been abuzz of actors sharing examples of statements showing how they earn pennies in residuals for small- and medium-size roles on streaming series.
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Leeds noted that early on, actors and other creatives were willing to take streaming jobs under less advantageous terms than TV or film because it seemed like a breakthrough moment for media. But now that all the action in premium TV has largely shifted to high-budget streaming (in SAG-AFTRA contract parlance), actors feel it’s time to rebalance the scales. And so do SAG-AFTRA’s fellow striking union members in the Writers Guild of America, which began its work stoppage on May 2.
The take-it-or-leave-it offers handed to talent below series-regular status can be especially galling considering the eye-popping budgets of some streaming series. Leeds rejects the idea that streamers can’t afford higher residuals because most of the parent companies are still in investment mode and losing billions on these fledgling platforms.
“If you’re making a show for $7 million an episode, I don’t care where you’re making it. If you can’t make money on that show for $7 million, then you can’t afford to make the show. Simple as that,” Leeds says. “I don’t go out and buy something I can’t afford, right?”
What’s also frustrating to actors is the gamesmanship that often ensues with studio business affairs departments. Actors routinely describe having to fight with line producers and showrunners to ensure they’re paid the minimum episodes or weeks, as required by the extent of their role on a show. Actors on picket lines say employers work hard to find creative ways to redefine acting job categories (guest star, co-star, major-role performer, special guest star, series recurring, et al.) detailed in the SAG-AFTRA contract, always with the goal of avoiding higher fees and longer periods of guaranteed pay.
The nickel-and-diming goes all the way down to how much travel, relocation and per diem expenses are shelled out. Leeds said it’s exhausting to fight the small battles that are too minor for agents to engage on; he often strikes agreements and amendments directly with business affairs executives. Leeds credits SAG-AFTRA’s contract enforcement staff for being a resource to help him understand exactly what he’s due per his work assignment.
To illustrate the erosion of the working actor’s pay scale, Leeds describes two roles that might be found in a typical drama series — one requiring only a few lines and one central to the plot of the episode. In many cases, in Leeds’ experience, those roles are now paid at the same minimum rate in streaming, even though one requires much more from the actor.
“You have a role that’s a waiter, for example, who comes into a restaurant scene and says ‘Is there anything else I can get for you?’ and that’s the end of your job. And then there’s the ‘major role performer,’ who would be the murderer in a procedural. And they’re paying the same amount of money for those two roles. In streaming they’ve eliminated that [major role] tier of performers. So everybody is just relegated to the floor.”
Actors who remember the heyday of network TV also remember higher fees and heftier residuals.
“When you did a TV show for CBS, NBC or ABC, you made a good living off your residuals and also your wage,” Kathy Boettcher recalled.
As far as Leeds and others are concerned, profits in streaming can’t be carved out of the earnings of blue-collar Hollywood.
“We’re not in the business of giving you a discount anymore, at least for our lowest-paid members,” Leeds said. “We have to protect our lowest-paid members because they have no option but to say yes. It is so difficult to get a job in the first place.”
Michael Edwin is one of those people. A SAG member since 1978, Edwin came out to picket in front of Amazon Studios in Culver City on July 14. He was candid, sweaty and angry as he described the degradation of his earnings over a 20-year period.
“This didn’t start with streaming. They did this with CDs, and DVDs, they did this with cable,” Edwin told Variety. “They say, ‘We don’t know what the business model is. And we don’t know what we’re gonna make.’ But I think that what they’ve structured, because of the sizes of the companies, is really destructive to our pay scale. Because the truth of the matter is, most of the people you see out here — we work four or five, six times a year, even the guest stars. And we’re not series regulars. We’re not people that have regular incomes. We piece it together. It’s tough enough just to make health insurance. And so the glue for all that was the residuals.”
Edwin did the quick math in his head. Once more, the numbers explain why he sees a strike as the union’s only option if management can’t understand why union members need a double-digit boost in their minimum rates.
“On a [broadcast] network show that I would have done, say in 2003 or so, I might over the course of the life of the residuals, which would be over 15-20 years, make about $15,000 on those residuals,” Edwin said. “Now, it’s more like $2,000, if it’s that. It’s because most of the network replay has gone away. It’s almost like you can’t do the job because you just can’t stay afloat.”
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