Actors’ Negotiations With Studios Moving Slowly

With less than two weeks to go before their contract expires June 30, actors and studios continue inching toward a new deal in negotiations that appear certain to extend at least until month’s end.

Although the two sides remain at odds over money issues, there still are no signs the talks are in danger of breaking off as they did during the earlier, often testy negotiations between studios and the Writers Guild of America. Writers and studios eventually resumed negotiations, agreeing to a new contract last month.

Both actors and studios are abiding by a self-imposed “news blackout,” but sources on both sides said they remain confident that a strike will be avoided. They expect a deal around June 30, or shortly after that. Both sides are hoping to have a tentative proposal before the Fourth of July holiday, but say they could come back to the table after that if some outstanding issues remain.

Progress is expected to accelerate just before the contract expiration date, as it often does during labor talks. Some say actors are reluctant to cut a deal too early because it could leave negotiators open to criticism that they could have gotten more had they stayed at the bargaining table longer.

Despite the optimism, significant gaps need to be closed.

One big issue is in minimum pay for speaking parts. Actors want a 5% annual increase, whereas studios are offering the same 3.5% annual bump they gave writers. Under the current contract, minimum pay for speaking roles is $617 a day and $2,142 a week.

Actors also want additional payments when a television show is sold to a cable network. Actors now split among themselves 6% of the license fee. Sources said actors are asking for 7.5%, an amount studios are unlikely to grant because they would have to raise the amounts given to other guilds.

(As a rule of thumb, actors as a group receive three times what writers get in residuals because the actors must split the money among a larger pool of people. Writers, for example, now get 2% of the cable license fees.)

Actors seem certain to get a raise in the residual rate the Fox network pays that is equal to what other networks pay. Fox now pays a discount negotiated when it was an upstart network.

In addition to pay, some smaller issues are on the table, such as one asking for a $10.80 daily allowance for dancers who provide their own shoes and issues involving dubbing films into languages other than English and Spanish.

Producers have their own cost-saving demands, including some to reduce travel costs and one to set up a lower pay schedule for actors who have three speaking lines or fewer.

Sources close to actors say studios are overly insistent on giving to actors the identical deal they gave writers. The practice of giving one union what another has received is known as “pattern bargaining.”

They add that actors, represented by the Screen Actors Guild and its sister union, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, want at least some unique sweeteners, especially for middle-class actors making $30,000 to $70,000 a year who feel their pay is being squeezed.

Sources close to studios, represented by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, complain that actors must further whittle down their demands to ones with the highest priorities.

Actors insist they significantly narrowed their proposals to about 35 basic areas, but studios say that when all clarifications and amendments are counted the number is more like 85.

Sources on both sides agreed that one reason negotiations are moving slowly is because of the tediousness of going through numerous proposals and because the SAG and AFTRA unions have many more people with a hand in negotiations than the smaller Writers Guild did. The unions combined represent about 135,000 actors.