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The pact with Hollywood's major film and TV studios covers
70,000 members of the American Federation of Television and
Radio Artists, and it won final approval despite an all-out
campaign by SAG urging some 40,000 actors who belong to both
unions to vote down the AFTRA accord.
"Despite an unprecedented disinformation campaign aimed at
interfering with our ratification process, a majority of
members ultimately focused on what mattered -- the obvious
merits of a labor agreement that contains substantial gains for
every category of performer in both traditional and new media,"
AFTRA National President Roberta Reardon said in a statement.
Some of the AFTRA contract terms include a doubling of the
rate for reuse fees, or "residuals," paid for TV shows sold as
Internet downloads.
The contract also sets a new residual fee structure for
advertising-supported online streaming of broadcast TV shows,
and it requires studios to hire union actors when producing
some forms of entertainment especially for new media.
Terms of the new AFTRA pact are essentially the same as
those in the "final offer" the studios presented to SAG last
Monday when talks broke off hours before their existing
contract expired.
AFTRA leaders had warned that defeat of their contract
settlement could lead to renewed labor unrest as Hollywood
struggles to recover from a tumultuous 14-week strike by
screenwriters that ended in February.
SAG issued a statement calling the AFTRA agreement
"inadequate" and saying it would "continue to address the
issues of importance to actors that AFTRA left on the table."
The studios' bargaining agent, the Alliance of Motion
Picture and Television Producers, also issued a statement
calling the AFTRA ratification a "vote of confidence by actors
in the agreement."
"We hope that SAG's Hollywood leadership will allow SAG
members to vote on AMPTP's final offer," the statement said.
SAG has said it would formally respond to the AMPTP's final
offer on Thursday. |
