The new contract struck between the Hollywood studios and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists achieved across-the-board gains for actors, especially for journeyman performers who have seen their incomes squeezed in recent years.
But it is not clear if those gains will be sufficient to mollify leaders of the larger Screen Actors Guild, which resumed negotiations with the studios on Wednesday.
AFTRA's tentative accord, addressing bread-and-butter economic issues, includes a 13% hike in minimum pay for guest stars and other major role performers. It also doubles the pay actors receive from movies and TV shows sold online and establishes payments for programs that are streamed online.
If its members ratify the agreement, AFTRA would become the second Hollywood union to accept a deal based on the contract negotiated by the directors guild in January. That would probably make it harder for SAG -- which represents the overwhelming majority of performers in prime-time TV and all of those in studio feature films -- to argue that its members deserve significantly better terms.
"This is a challenging time in the entertainment industry, and this was a tough negotiation," said AFTRA President Roberta Reardon. "Our ability to achieve these crucial breakthroughs for performers was a direct result of [our] pragmatic approach to collective bargaining."
Reardon's comments appeared intended to underline the differences between the smaller union -- whose members also include musicians, radio announcers and daytime television actors -- and SAG, which has taken a more aggressive posture in negotiations with the studios.
The two labor groups, after squabbling over turf issues, recently ended a 27-year partnership under which they negotiated with the studios jointly. AFTRA was able to wrap up its negotiations in just three weeks, modeling its agreement on a pact that settled the writers strike earlier this year. The writers' deal was based on the contract the Directors Guild of America negotiated.
SAG officials declined to comment on the AFTRA agreement, saying they hadn't seen details yet. The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents the studios at the bargaining table, said the parties found a way to "fairly and sensibly tailor our industry's new media framework to meet the needs of actors."
Although AFTRA's accord falls short of satisfying some of SAG's key demands, it could still help the larger union craft a deal that would avoid a strike this summer.
