The Screen Actors Guild (SAG) is a union first established in 1933 that seeks to protect the interest of performers in both the film and television industries. In 2012, the union merged with another union, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) to form what is today known as SAG-AFTRA (Fortmueller, 2016). The main mission of SAG-AFTRA is to ensure that all negotiations between artists and producers are fair, that working conditions for performers are maintained to a certain level of quality, and to protect the copyrights of all involved.
The SAG was formed during an era when actors would sign multi-project contracts with various film studios. In the 1930s, it was common for actors to be signed to work only for a specific studio, and there were no restrictions on how much an actor would be forced to work on any given project (Prindle, 2012). Thus, actors would often face unreasonable work hours, such as having to work for sixteen hours in a row. Movie studios would also be able to influence an actor’s personal life, such as determining what activities an actor would not be allowed to do in his or her free time. At the same time, Hollywood was becoming big business, and film studios were generating large amounts of money off the work of actors, while actors were not being compensated a fair amount.
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"Union Profile of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG)".
The SAG came into being after a group of six actors decided to form a union in order to protect the rights of actors. These members included Berton Churchill and Ralph Morgan, who were prolific actors during the 1920s and 1930s. The first president was Ralph Morgan, and the initial board of directors included notable actors such as Boris Karloff and Morgan Wallace (Prindle, 2012). Initially, SAG did not attract the vast majority of actors, who were afraid that identifying with the union would lead to getting fewer roles. However, the pivotal event that greatly expanded SAG’s membership, and therefore its influence on the acting industry, was when a group of film studios decided that they would not compete with one another when bidding for a particular actor. This meant that actor salaries would be kept relatively small, since the film studios had all agreed they would not try to outbid one another. In response, the SAG soon gained more than 4,000 members, with many actors joining the union as a way to protect their financial interests when working for film studios (Prindle, 2012). This ultimately forced the film studios to negotiate with SAG, so that an agreement regarding the amount of money an actor would receive, along with basic guarantees of reducing work hours, providing breaks and improving work conditions, could be established.
Although originally established as an Actors Union, SAG-AFTRA has expanded to included many who perform on screen and radio, particularly after SAG merged with AFTRA. Currently, the total number of members is 160,000 (SAG-AFTRA, 2018). There are no specific training or skills required outside of current or previous work in one of the associated industries. Thus, the requirement would be that one must be a professional performer to join, although this would be determined on whether the individual has worked professionally in one of these industries, and not whether the individual has been trained in a specific way. Currently, dues are based on the amount of money a performer receives, so there is no standardized amount that each member has to pay. Instead, each member must pay 1.575% of any earnings made on a SAG-AFTRA contract (SAG-AFTRA, 2018), so those who make more money also pay more in total dues. This is a flat rate designed to protect those who are in SAG-AFTRA, but may not currently be working. This model was adopted due to the nature of the film and television industry, which is based upon short-term contracts relating to individual projects, rather than long-term employment.
Due to its near universal membership among performers in multiple industries, including film, television and radio, SAG-AFTRA has basic understandings and relationships with all major American film studios, including Disney and Warner Bros; all major television networks, including NBC, ABC, CBS and Fox; and all major radio broadcasters.
The first major strike conducted by SAG was in 1960, in regard to residual rights on films that had been subsequently sold to television. Actors demanded at least six percent in residual earnings, and were successful after the strike left many studios without talent to develop further projects. A strike in 1978 led to an increase in pay for scenes involving commercials, with actors doubling their hourly rate. A strike in 1980 led to a boycott of the Emmy Awards, with the dispute being over the amount of salary that was being paid for made-for-television films (Critchlow, 2009). In all three instances, the union was able to successfully negotiate higher salaries and better conditions for all of its workers.
The current level of influence for the union is very significant, as nearly all major entertainment industries utilize performers who belong to SAG-AFTRA. As such, future growth appears to be promising, in part because anyone who seeks to become a performer must join SAG-AFTRA to be offered roles, and because SAG-AFTRA has been successful in all of its labor disputes. SAG-AFTRA will also penalize its own members who are found to have worked on non-union projects during a labor strike, so there is little incentive for any performer to not join SAG-AFTRA. The union will therefore have a large influence on the entertainment industry for years to come.
- Critchlow, D. T. (2009). Hollywood and politics: a sourcebook. Routledge.
- Fortmueller, K. (2016). The SAG–AFTRA Merger: Union Convergence in a Changing Media Landscape. Television & New Media, 17(3), 212-227.
- Prindle, D. F. (2012). The Politics of glamour: Ideology and democracy in the Screen Actors Guild. Univ of Wisconsin Press.
- SAG-AFTRA. (2018). Paying dues. Accessible online at http://www.sagaftra.org/content/paying-dues
