Negotiators for the Screen Actors Guild have reached agreement on a new three-year contract with the AMPTP, the organization that represents the producers of motion pictures and television. Here are the details.
Bottom line as I read it: No increase in DVD revenues for the actors, and unspectacular cost-of-living increases. Don't get thrown off by that line about the deal being "the richest in the unions' history." Darn near every deal in this business is "the richest in the unions' history" in some sense. A 1% increase over the next ten years would still be richer than the previous terms but it would be a pretty lousy deal.
A lot of folks will say that of the agreement reached yesterday, though I suspect few will be surprised. Once the Directors Guild decided not to pursue a significant share of DVD moola, that pretty much killed it for the other unions. The studios have made it pretty clear that not sharing home video revenues means enough to them to shut the town down indefinitely and to try and break whatever union refused to fold on the issue. Maybe they meant it, maybe they didn't. In any case, there didn't seem to be the moxie among SAG members to call that bluff, just as the resolve wasn't there for the Writers Guild. We took a crummy deal, probably worse than what the actors seem to have achieved.
A shame, really. Unlike the Writers Guild, SAG can have an immediate impact on production. If we walk out, there are scripts that can be used, at least for a little while. But when the actors strike, no one shows up on the set the next morning. This is why actors' strikes tend to be short while writers' strikes tend to be long. A lot of folks — and not just actors but others who think the precedent of sharing DVD loot needs to be established — were hoping the Screen Actors Guild would kick that door open. Oh, well. I suppose Michael Eisner needs that money more than we do.