Several thousand members of the SAG-AFTRA union have signed an open letter stating that they’re not ready to give up without getting the ...
Several thousand members of the SAG-AFTRA union have signed an open letter stating that they’re not ready to give up without getting the deal they want.
The union has been on strike since July 14, which has brought most Hollywood productions to a standstill.
The group of 3,600 members are calling themselves Members in Solidarity. Some big-name stars who signed the letter include Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Jon Hamm, Maya Hawke, Marisa Tomei, John Leguizamo, and Bryan Cranston, per Variety.
The letter says the negotiating committee still represents the desires of the majority of SAG-AFTRA members, who are “are still standing in solidarity, ready to strike as long as it takes and to endure whatever we must in order to win a deal that is worthy of our collective sacrifice.”
“We have not come all this way to cave now,” the letter says. “We have not gone without work, without pay and walked picket lines for months just to give up on everything we’ve been fighting for. We cannot and will not accept a contract that fails to address the vital and existential problems that we all need fixed.”
“In any union, there will always be a minority who are not willing to make temporary sacrifices for the greater good,” it continued.
The letter is being released as some union members are becoming restless as negotiations fail to go anywhere. Industry insiders had hoped that the end of the writers’ strike in late September would spur a similar resolution for SAG-AFTRA, especially since both unions had similar demands. But so far that hasn’t happened.
Recently, a group of A-list actors led by George Clooney came up with an alternative solution for raising funds, offering to put up $150 million of their own money over a three-year period by way of removing the current cap on union dues. They said this bottom-up structure would make top earners the last to collect on residuals rather than the first.
But this didn’t pan out, as the negotiating committee didn’t “see the validity” of their proposal. It’ll be up to the SAG-AFTRA reps to work out a mutually agreeable deal with major studios in order for Hollywood to finally get back to work.
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