Despite recent and dire reports of deadlocking, AFTRA has arrived at a deal that its board is recommending to the membership for ratification. This morning's press reports would suggest it is not a great deal, and I would imagine that Screen Actors Guild leaders are studying it right this minute — unless they don't yet have its actual terms — and pondering a response. One possible one could be a massive push to get AFTRA members to reject it.
The slightly-overlapping memberships of the two actors' unions may come into play here. SAG has 122,000 members. AFTRA has around 80,000. There's about a 44,000 person overlap and it's generally believed that those who are members of both unions are more likely to be actively working and therefore more likely to vote. So a lot of those who'll vote on the AFTRA deal will be doing so with an eye towards what that would mean for SAG.
AFTRA covers primarily magazine-type programs, some soap operas, a few game shows, some cable shows, no movies and very few prime-time shows, especially the kind that have storylines. If SAG went on strike but AFTRA signed, the networks would have some new programming…mainly the shows that managed to stay in production during the Writers Strike.
That's not a likely situation — AFTRA signing, SAG striking — but it's possible. What I'm waiting for is some response from SAG leadership. They're going to have to decide (and soon) if they're prepared to hold out for substantially better terms. The studios have dropped their formerly-intractable demand for the right to use clips of actors in almost any venue without the actors' specific permission. Presumably, the AMPTP guys realized that was an issue that could galvanize an actors' strike…one which would even be rejected by AFTRA, the less militant of the two unions. So it's gone…for now. With that matter off the table, SAG will be left with a deal that's just plain weak on the dollars and cents, especially with regard to home video.
Let's see if the leadership of SAG is prepared to denounce the terms AFTRA's negotiators have accepted, and to insist they'll never settle for that. They probably are. So then the next question will be if SAG is prepared to follow through on that vow.