While much of Hollywood’s focus this past month was on the talks between the SAG-AFTRA negotiating committee and top studio execs to end the strike paralyzing the industry, the strike captains who manned the picket lines had their own part to play in the drama.
In the weeks leading up to the Nov. 4 videoconference when the studios made their final offer, strike captains got word that some members of the actors’ guild, along with their agents, were drafting a letter to send to members to sign before presenting to the negotiating committee.
A proposed version of the letter obtained by TheWrap called on the negotiating committee to end the strike as soon as possible for the sake of the tens of thousands of crew members who had been out of work since it began on May 2. At least 45,000 production jobs were lost during the strike, according to estimates from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“The purpose of a strike is to make a great deal. It is to get maximum leverage and now it’s closing time and it’s time to get everyone back to work,” the proposed letter read. “This strike cannot be aspirational, it must be productive and at this point we are not gaining as much as we are harming. Part of being an excellent negotiator is not only getting great gains but knowing when it is time to stop.”
Kylie Sparks, a SAG-AFTRA member who served as a strike captain on the Warner Bros. picket line, said the letter reached the attention of the captains on their private Discord channel, where they shared notes on logistics and preparations for each day’s picket lines. (TheWrap was not able to ascertain who authored the letter.)
Sparks said that the captains wanted to move quickly to organize their own letter countering the one that was being passed around, in order to urge the negotiating committee not to settle for a deal that didn’t provide the gains that actors needed in streaming, artificial intelligence and other key areas.
“I am also a pre-WGA member along with being a SAG-AFTRA member, so I had been on strike for the six full months,” Sparks told TheWrap. “For me, it was imperative to show the negotiating committee that we were still united behind them and that a few bad apples weren’t going to spoil the bunch.”
Within a few days, the strike captains used their online channels to draft up their letter and posted it on Oct. 26 on a website called “Members in Solidarity.” The letter was designed to be a sequel of sorts to the letter sent to the SAG-AFTRA negotiating committee during the initial round of talks with the AMPTP before the strike began, saying they would “rather stay on strike than take a bad deal.”
By the time the SAG-AFTRA negotiating committee met with the studio CEOs on Nov. 4 to receive their “best, last and final offer,” over 6,000 SAG-AFTRA members had signed the “Members in Solidarity” letter, including actors Bryan Cranston, Patton Oswalt, Mark Ruffalo and Julia Louis-Dreyfus.
“In any union, there will always be a minority who are not willing to make temporary sacrifices for the greater good,” the letter read. “But we, the majority who voted overwhelmingly to authorize this strike, 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.”
David Jolliffe, a veteran member of the SAG-AFTRA negotiating committee and vice president of the guild’s Los Angeles local, said the strike captains were in lockstep with the committee throughout the strike, and said the support they sent through the letter and through videos taken from the final days of the picket lines was not taken for granted.
That support was part of the reason why he urged guild president Fran Drescher and his fellow committee members to take an extra day before approving the deal, to ensure that key provisions were locked in.
“We knew from the moment we started talks back in June to the moment we approved the deal that when we spoke to the studios about these terms that we needed in the contract we were speaking with the voice of our entire membership,” Jolliffe said. “The message we sent in the negotiating room was the same one the strike captains and the members were sending every day outside the studio gates.”
Still, some of the voices who called for the best deal possible aren’t entirely satisfied. One guild member who signed the solidarity letter and asked to remain anonymous because he was waiting to hear responses from the negotiating committee on a membership videoconference, expressed skepticism that the AI provisions negotiated in the contract would be sufficient to protect actors’ right to consent.
“Is the language in this contract going to really protect actors if giving consent to make replicas just becomes a requirement for getting a job?” the member asked. “What’s to stop studios from just taking a job offered to a background actor who doesn’t want to consent to AI being used on them and give it to someone who is ok with it?”
Guild insiders tell TheWrap that there are some strike captains who feel the AI protections as summarized by the guild have too many loopholes that could lead to exploitation. Over the past week, captains and other members have voiced those concerns to SAG-AFTRA leadership at member Q&A meetings, including Kylie Sparks, who urged members to vote against ratifying the contract in an Instagram post on Monday.
The message we sent in the negotiating room was the same one the strike captains and the members were sending every day outside the studio gates.
David Jolliffe, member of the SAG-AFTRA negotiating committee
While debates over those provisions continue, the strike captains who spoke to TheWrap all expressed pride for the work they put in on the picket lines and the solidarity that Hollywood labor has built over the past few months.
Will Dinsmoor, another strike captain who secured signatures for the solidarity letter, said the experience of working on the Warner picket line helped get him through the tough times during the 118 days that actors were on strike. Dinsmoor had already been involved with SAG-AFTRA as a convention delegate and SAG-AFTRA Foundation volunteer, but his time working on the picket lines made him only want to get more involved.
“What this strike has given us is a new generation of members who are ready to get involved with the Hollywood guilds, and the whole membership is more united than I’ve ever seen,” Dinsmoor said. “There’s going to be more fights ahead over AI and streaming and all the things we went on strike for, but that is going to be a major difference.”
