'I stand with my union and colleagues,' says Priyanka Chopra on the ongoing actors and writers' strike in Hollywood
'I stand with my union and colleagues,' says Priyanka Chopra on the ongoing actors and writers' strike in Hollywood
Amid the ongoing actors and writers’ strike in Hollywood, Priyanka Chopra has shared a post on Instagram. She wrote SAG-AFTRA strong and captioned- “I stand with my union and colleagues. In solidarity, we build a better tomorrow.”
What is SAG-AFTRA?
The Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists is an American labor union representing approximately 160,000 film and television actors, journalists, radio personalities.
Why the strike?
Streaming and its ripple effects are at the center of the dispute. The guild says that even as series budgets have increased, writers’ share of that money has consistently shrunk.
Streaming services’ use of smaller staffs — known in the industry as “mini rooms” — for shorter stints has made sustained income harder to come by, the guild says. And the number of writers working at guild minimums has gone from about a third to about half in the past decade.
“On TV staffs, more writers are working at minimum regardless of experience, often for fewer weeks,” the guild said in a March report.
The lack of a regular seasonal calendar in streaming has depressed pay further, the report says. And scheduled annual pay bumps under the current contract have fallen well short of increases in inflation.
The weekly minimum for a staff writer on a television series in the 2019-2020 season was $4,546, according to industry trade outlet Variety. They work an average of 29 weeks on a network show for $131,834 annually, or an average of 20 weeks on a streaming show for $90,920. For a writer-producer, the figure is $6,967 per week. Writers of comedy-variety shows for streaming have no minimum protections at all, the guild says.
Actors join in too
The actors could join the already striking Writers Guild of America and grind the already slowed production process to a halt if no agreement is reached with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. The sides agreed to an extension before the original contract expiration date on June 30, resetting it to Wednesday at 11:59 p.m.
Growing pessimism surrounding the talks seemed to turn to open hostility when SAG-AFTRA released a statement Tuesday night.
It came in response to a report in Variety that a group of Hollywood CEOs had been the force behind the request for mediation, which the union said was leaked before its negotiators were informed of the request.
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