Some facts about SAG, which I’m aware of because my daughter was a member.
There are non-union productions. However, her manager complained that they resisted paying actors as long as possible. Actors in union productions got paid right away.
The union runs residuals. Now I suppose a non-union actor could find where a commercial ran and try to get paid, but good luck with that. For many jobs residuals are where the money is.
Insurance has already been mentioned.
So, if you support non-union people working, you either support a two-tier system where some of the cast gets paid faster than others, (and more) or a bunch of freeloaders who benefit from the strike of the others.
Since good actors are obviously going to join the union for the benefits, before long you might have few non-union actors making it through casting. A few extras, perhaps.
There are also health and safety things the union enforces, like rules about overtime for kids. Productions might violate them, but the actors at least get paid.
To add a little bit to that:
Edit: crap, I messed up. I think it’s the Actor’s Equity Association I’m talking about. I’ll leave what I wrote, in case it’s still interesting to anyone else.
I have a local friend who directs local plays in a 99-seat theatre that’s one step above community theatre. He wants to include both non-union amateurs in his productions as well as union folks. Both he and the union folks can get special dispensation from the union for these productions: he has to meet certain labor conditions in his productions, and the union actors have to ensure that they’re only engaging in a limited number of these performances, and the bill for the plays mention for each union cast member that they’re there under dispensation or whatever.
It all works, because everyone involved is prioritizing decent working conditions.
Yes, the community theater we went to was non-union, but some of the leads would be noted as Equity members. And my daughter got a waiver when she acted in a couple of NYU student films. No money, but great experience since you heard them talking about things the professionals did when she was in her dressing room on a shoot.
There are plenty of non-union productions in NY but managers don’t send actors there, not just out of fealty to the union, but because it is not worth the hassle.
Pre-internet there was a weekly paper in NY with jobs, mostly non-union. Our favorite was for a PBS production looking for a “non-union dwarf.”
I’m not allowed to negotiate an exclusive contract with another legal entity?
So much for small government.
Small government for me but not for thee…
They are and they should be, I fully agree.
Sure, you can try to do that but there are legal limitations on what that contract can contain.
I’m not generally in favour of small government.
The “hiring new actors” thing and the scabs thing won’t matter if the studios can just use AI to pop people into their movies for less money. That’s part of the strike, I thought.
Then other means of protest and political activism are equally open to both individuals and union. There is a long history of precisely that.
I want a balance of rights between the union worker, the non-union worker and the employer. None with ultimately supremacy over the other. All given both freedoms and restrictions. The closer we can get to that optimal balance the better a world we live in.
I suspect you want much the same but we just differ in where we draw those lines.
So in this case if you are in the guild you get to benefit from residuals. Not in the guild, no residuals.
Maybe it is time to give actors their full compensation for the job up front and dump the concept of residuals. If someone works in a widget factory, they get paid for the widgets they made, they don’t get a few extra cents every time someone later uses the widget. (It is sort of like the “tip every damn body for every damn thing” vs. “pay them adequately in the first place” argument.)
Neither does the manufacturer get anything, either, every time someone uses the widget. It’s not at all the same. The profit from each widget is predictable because it’s sold once and once only at a predictable wholesale price set by the manufacturer, and the worker is paid accordingly. Movies and TV shows are entirely different. Even immediate revenues are not predictable, and the revenues from further licensing down the road even less predictable.
I Love Lucy is a great example of this. Despite being a massive hit in its initial TV run, that was absolutely dwarfed by the huge revenues from subsequent syndication. CBS was too short-sighted to anticipate this source of revenue, so the deal allowed Lucy and Desi exclusive rights to all the syndication revenues which made them very rich. If artists didn’t get residuals, such windfalls would all go to the production companies.
…so are we going to assume that every movie and TV show is going to be a hit then? Or are we going to assume they are going to bomb? Which do you think the actors would prefer? And which do you think the studios would go for?
Residuals is the compromise. If the movie or the TV show is a hit, the actors get a slice of the pie. If it isn’t, then they don’t. Take residuals away and the negotiations will get even harder.
And that’s the reason why the streamer’s refusal to release the numbers is a sticking point. If they don’t want to release the numbers, then “paying more upfront” is the obvious counter-offer. That this isn’t even up for consideration should tell you something.
The baseline here can’t just be “adequate.” Not when the creative input of the actors, the writers, the directors, the people above and below the line, are literally the things that people spend money to go see. If creatives make and do things that generate money for the studios, they deserve to get a fair share.
You get whatever you can freely negotiate in your contract.
A more interesting comparison might be with my own industry of pharmaceuticals.
Many people, teams of hundreds, work very hard on products that might, at a moment’s notice, be pulled completely and never see the light of day.
Those that do may go on to be bought/sold/licensed/adapted in various ways with a pricing structure that varies market to market. They also ultimately have a patent expiry far shorter than the creative industries and generic copies are produced.
(A company typically ends up with market exclusivity for perhaps a dozen years and I think a much shorter period for the creative industries would be great)
And yet, there is no equivalent concept of “residuals” in that industry (though there is often a very enticing share ownership scheme), people mostly just get paid a flat wage for being involved in a project whether it is a flop or a blockbuster. Seems to work out OK so perhaps a purely “up front” model isn’t completely out of the question.
I learned it from Steeleye Span.
Isn’t “Big Pharma” the byword for corporate greed? That’s not just to the consumer, but also the employees. I wouldn’t hold the industry up as a good example for others to follow.
Moderating:
A hijack about the actors union is one thing. Moving into Pharma is out.
Please drop all the hijacks now, especially the Pharma bit.
And what percentage of actors have the power to negotiate anything? 1%? 0.1%? Effectively there would be no residuals for the vast majority. For the writers it’s probably and even lower percentage. The majority of the guild needs the residuals to even hope to approach the minimum needed to get health insurance. It will be a benefit to the downtrodden studio heads.