Hollywood’s top players are working on a plan to bring in federal mediators to help avert a SAG-AFTRA strike, with just one day until the contract deadline.
A group of CEOs and senior executives, including Disney TV chief Dana Walden and cinema chief Alan Bergman, David Zaslav of Warner Bros. Discovery and Netflix’s Ted Sarandos met by conference call Monday evening to discuss the urgent situation with SAG-AFTRA set to continue strike as early as Thursday. In addition to executives discussing efforts to bring in a federal mediator, talent agency chiefs including WME’s Ari Emanuel, CAA’s Bryan Lourd and UTA’s Jeremy Zimmer reached out to SAG-AFTRA execs in recent times. days to offer assistance that could stave off a second work stoppage in Hollywood this summer.
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The Alliance of Film and Television Producers, which represents major studios, has requested assistance from the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service. It is not yet clear whether SAG-AFTRA, which represents 160,000 members, will support the idea as it would require extending its negotiations a second time.
The SAG-AFTRA contract is currently set to expire Wednesday at midnight PT, and the two sides remain at odds over a host of issues, including streaming residuals, minimum rate increases and artificial intelligence. There has been relatively little progress in recent days and it looks increasingly likely that a strike will occur.
The contract was originally set to expire on June 30, but the two sides agreed to a 12-day extension.
A SAG-AFTRA strike would immediately end all film and television production that has not already been halted by the Writers Guild of America strike, which has been going on for more than two months. The impact would be particularly significant overseas, where AMPTP companies were able to continue shooting some shows without the involvement of WGA writer-producers.
On Monday, SAG-AFTRA executives briefed entertainment publicists on strike rules for a work stoppage. The tone of the call led many participants to conclude that it would take a miracle to avert a strike.
SAG-AFTRA called for volunteers to serve as strike captains, and members were on WGA picket lines on Tuesday receiving training from WGA captains at several Hollywood studios.
The Biden administration recently dispatched Julie Su, the acting labor secretary, to help broker a deal that kept West Coast ports from closing.
The hope on the management side is that a federal mediator would be viewed as a neutral third party to help move the parties toward a compromise that would be more acceptable to rank-and-file members of the union if it went through a mediator.
Sources familiar with the negotiations say AMPTP representatives and member company executives are frustrated with what they see as SAG-AFTRA’s intransigence. There is a strong feeling that a militant minority within the union wields an outsized influence on bargaining strategy, regardless of the heavy toll a strike would take on the actors as well as other unions and myriad companies that focus on work linked to production.
“We negotiate with ourselves and we’re not getting anywhere,” the source said. “How can a mediator hurt? »
(Photo: Mark Ruffalo)
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Disney’s Bob Iger was on the conference call.
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