In a video posted Tuesday to Twitter, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Kumail Nanjiani and several other stars urged SAG-AFTRA members to vote in favor of authorizing an actors’ strike ahead of the guild’s talks with studios next month. called upon.
“I’m asking you to join me in voting ‘yes’ on strike authorization,” Louis-Dreyfus says in the video, which he posted on Twitter under the caption, “We are a union, and a union standing together.” Is!
Joining Louis-Dreyfus and Nanjiani are Paul W. Downs, Abbi Jacobson, Sophia Bush, Jean Smart, John DiMaggio, Aaron Jennings, Coral Peña, Bob Balaban, Daveed Diggs, Rafael Casal, Matt Bush, Jodi Balfour, Lucas Gage, Tom Pelphrey Were. Sam Richardson and D’Arcy Warden. Watch the clip below.
The guild is set to begin talks with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers on June 7. Guild leadership seeking permission for members to go on strike, talks between SAG-AFTRA and AMPTP break down, as talks between AMPTP and Writers Guild of America did on May 2, sparking ongoing writers’ strike.
Prior to negotiations, on 17 May the guild’s board formally asked members for permission to strike if the negotiators deemed it necessary. As an indication of where the membership could be headed, the board acted unanimously.
The participants in the video emphasized that voting to authorize the strike does not mean that there will be a strike, only that the guild does not need to seek further permission and can use that possibility as leverage. Are.
“A ‘yes’ vote,” Smart said during the clip, “means we give the national board the power to strike if AMPTP doesn’t give our members the contract reform they need.”
“It’s just one tool in our arsenal,” Nanjiani says.
Like the WGA’s demands, the actors in the video calls call for increased compensation and residuals, along with a ban on artificial intelligence.
Actor Rafael Casal said, “We also need to protect against unregulated use of our likeness and voice in AI.”
The SAG-AFTRA talks come at a tense moment in Hollywood, as there is a very real possibility that studios could find themselves in the midst of a strike by several powerful unions at once. In addition to SAG-AFTRA, the Directors Guild of America also has a contract with AMPTP that expires on June 30 – the groups have been negotiating since May 10.
