SAG Claims Dues from Studios for Actors Affected by Writers’ Strike

The hangover of the writers’ strike in Hollywood continues to persist, with actors saying the studios still need to hand out paychecks. Hollywood studios may have to cough up as much as $10 million towards payments to actors as back pay for being kept out of work during the course of the writers’ strike, thanks to a small provision in the contract currently existing between the Screen Actors Guild and the studios.

The Screen Actors Guild, a union with 122,000 members, has been silently at work, filing claims of payment on behalf of ‘series regulars’ – actors who feature regularly on a show – who had been temporarily employed during the strike, against over 80 shows. The shows against which claims have been filed include Lost, CSI, and Ugly Betty.

According to the Guild, the studios had apparently flouted a force majeure clause in their existing contract that stated actors could receive pay for approximately two to two and a half weeks should they be forced out of work owing to ‘extraordinary circumstances’, the writers’ strike being a prime candidate to fit that definition.

According to Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, the general counsel for the Screen Actors Guild, “The employers have refused to live up to their contractual obligations and have instead attempted to shift the studios’ financial obligations onto the backs of the actors who are their employees.”

Speaking about the issue, the spokesman for the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers, Jesse Hiestand, said that he could not say anything about the issue at the moment as it came under the purview of an arbitration proceeding that was, at the current moment, pending.

The force majeure clause has come to be a hurdle in the talks between the Guild and the studios regarding a fresh contract, which had restarted last week. The talks are on as the current contract between the two bodies expires on June 30. It has become the main point of contention between the two bodies, with the studios saying actors would be required to negotiate force majeure terms individually when they come on board and the Guild refusing the proposal.

The Guild apparently filed its claims against the studios just after the end of the writers’ strike, sometime in February. It has asked for a third party panel to arbitrate in the matter and also review their demands. The panel would have the final word on the issue, according to the Guild. The problem is that for such a panel to deliver a ruling would take a minimum of six months, a long time for actors affected by a strike that had nothing to do with them to wait for relief.