Screen Actors Guild End Strike With Tenative New Studio Deal

After a year long battle between the Screen Actors Guild and Hollywood studios, a new contract has finally been forged. However, the new terms seem to suggest that the strike was as ineffective as it was expensive.

Actors all over the country joined in with the fight again the studios, calling for higher pay, a percentage of advertising profits from shows streamed online, and an overall better deal, which the SAG was convinced they could provide.

Apparently, they were wrong.

After a strike that cost hundreds of thousands of actors a number of jobs, not to mention much needed pay, the deal that was finally settled on is not the shiny new contract that had been promised by union leaders. Instead it is the contract that was originally offered, not only to the SAG, but to the Hollywood writers who went on strike last year.

“Any leverage they had was weakened by their internal fighting and the overall economy. It was a strategy that failed on the [basis] of miscalculated leverage and power,” David Smith, an economist with Pepperdine University, explained in a recent interview with the LA Times.

Now the SAG has been left with a negative of $6 million in net worth, all of which can be traced back to this strike. And all for a 3.5% pay increase, and a small percentage of Internet funds, which could have been established months ago.  Details of the agreement covering television programs and motion pictures will not be disclosed prior to review by the SAG national board of directors this Sunday, April 19.