The 118-day SAG-AFTRA strike came to an end last week. The strike shut down major film and television productions in Hawaiʻi, putting hundreds of industry jobs on hold.
The heads of major Hollywood studios agreed to a tentative new three-year contract with SAG-AFTRA, the union representing actors, stunt performers, voiceover actors and dancers. The contract still needs to be ratified by the union's 160,000 members.
So what exactly did the union gain? And how does it impact local jobs? The Conversation talked with SAG-AFTRA local board President Andrea “Andy” Sikkink on Monday to learn more.
"We ended up getting basically almost 11%, I believe, across the first year as a wage increase, which is unheard of. But again, we were down, we were making less than we were making even six years ago, partly due to inflation, and partly due to just not increasing across the contract," she said.
The union also wanted to lock in protections from the digital duplication of a performer's likeness.
"They, in past, have come on island and shot movies and scanned people's faces, and replicated them by a computer to make it look like the crowd is huge. That may seem innocuous, but then they banked those faces in a video, digital banking, storage. And then they can pop those people into other things and not pay them, which is a huge, huge problem," Sikkink told The Conversation.
After fighting for similar terms in their contract, screenwriters returned to work last month after a 148-day strike that also ended in a new three-year deal with the studios.
This interview aired on The Conversation on Nov. 13, 2023. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. on HPR-1.
