Officials of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) announced Wednesday they were shutting down the nearly one-year strike of voice actors and motion capture artists two days after they reached a tentative agreement (TA) with the large video game developers.
The undemocratic, behind-closed-doors manner in which the strike was called off speaks volumes about the SAG-AFTRA bureaucracy and every other union leadership. The concerns and demands of the rank-and-file, who have been making sacrifices for months and have legitimate anxiety about the future of their entire profession, count for nothing to the well-paid union officials, who have not lost a day’s pay.
The announcement earlier this week of a TA came after a month of silence subsequent to the release of the union’s counterproposal to the video game companies’ initial “best and last” contract proposal.
Come July 26, the performers and voice actors would have been on strike for a year against the video game giants whose bargaining unit includes Activision Productions Inc., Blindlight LLC, Disney Character Voices Inc., Electronic Arts Productions Inc., Epic Games Inc., Formosa Interactive LLC, Insomniac Games Inc., Take 2 Productions Inc. and WB Games Inc.
The struggle of the underpaid performers, working in one of the most lucrative slices of the entertainment industry, has been sabotaged by SAG-AFTRA at every turn. The union has had no strategy, made no effort to unite with other sections of the industry, mobilized no one. The AFL-CIO unions exist largely to police the working class on behalf of the corporations, taking great pains to isolate each and every struggle, strangling every independent movement or initiative by workers.
The claims by SAG-AFTRA National Executive Director and Chief Negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland and President Fran Drescher, and their efforts to flatter the strikers with phrases about “courage” and “dedication,” are so much hot air.
In fact, the union stalled and stalled as long as possible before being forced to call a strike by the intransigence and contempt of the corporations. The voice actors’ and motion capture artists’ contract expired in November 2022, but SAG-AFTRA made no effort to unite them with the film and television actors on strike for 118 days in 2023. When a strike vote was finally held, in September 2023, with a nearly unanimous vote for a walkout, the thousands of other actors were still on strike.
SAG-AFTRA refused to act for another 10 months, effectively making sure the video game performers were in a far weaker position (including dividing them from the IATSE membership then in the midst of a contract battle). Once the strike began, the union carried out almost no activity, with sporadic picketing and the issuance of pathetic press releases. Workers are incapable of winning what they need with such leaderships and organizations.
The union officialdom refused to go after residuals for performers whose work can bring in hundreds of millions of dollars into the corporate coffers for a single video game. It proposed nothing to improve conditions in the workplace. Instead, SAG-AFTRA officials focused entirely on the issue of artificial intelligence (AI), but have not proposed or fought for a single measure to take control over its implementation and use, leaving that entirely in the hands of the conglomerates and workers at the mercy of the latter.
SAG-AFTRA, which has kept negotiations secret, and which has lambasted the corporations for publicly revealing some of what was discussed behind closed doors, called off the strike without revealing anything about the recently agreed TA, and before a single vote had been cast by the membership.
The strategy of isolating the strike included the signing of over 180 interim agreements with the conglomerates in an effort to keep the profits for the companies rolling in, while lessening the strength of those on the picket lines. The interim agreements, deals struck in secret and not put to a vote by workers, allowed the companies to continue production on titles they wanted, while keeping the rest of the workers in the industry idled and struggling to make ends meet.
In regard to picketing, it was always a sporadic, once-a-week affair to start, slowing to twice a month, once a month and then once every few months, with none lasting more than a few hours, and always at one studio at a time. The last picket was held over two months ago on April 2. This, even though one of the biggest video game promotional events, Summer Games Fest, was held last week, without a word said by anyone on stage or outside the venue about the fact that video game performers had been on strike for more than 10 months.
This was in keeping with the cowardly strategy of SAG-AFTRA, which asked consumers and other workers not to boycott any of the video games, or the shows and conventions promoting them, nor for actors and performers to refrain from attending industry events promoting video games and the studios themselves.
It did not take long for SAG-AFTRA, once they had a TA, working in tandem with the conglomerates, to end the strike. They did so before any rank-and-file performer has had the opportunity to review the TA, much less vote on it.
After announcing the deal, Crabtree-Ireland, the seventh-highest-paid union official in the US at over $1 million annually, commented
Everyone at SAG-AFTRA is immensely grateful for the sacrifices made by video game performers and the dedication of the Interactive Media Agreement Negotiating Committee throughout these many months of the video game strike. Patience and persistence has [sic] resulted in a deal that puts in place the necessary A.I. guardrails that defend performers’ livelihoods in the A.I. age, alongside other important gains.
There is not the slightest reason to place confidence in this claim. As we have noted over the course of this strike, as well as during the writers’ and film and television actors’ strikes, these deals do not provide “guardrails” of any kind, they simply facilitate the operations of the companies and help them overcome the “inconvenience” of writers’ and actors’ objections. They leave all control over the use of AI in the hands of the companies, only asking that they ask the artists for their “informed consent” over the use of their replicas. The “right to refuse consent” means next to nothing. Whoever is not an A-lister, (extremely famous, successful or important in the entertainment industry) and does not “consent,” will not work, period.
While AI is an awesome, revolutionary tool in the hands of artists and performers, as long as its implementation and control are left in the hands of management, it will be used as it has been, as a hammer to bludgeon workers into submission by reducing the jobs and eliminating entire professions within the industry. To take this technology into their own hands, or to move forward in any way, requires a break with the union bureaucracy. The video game performers should reject this deal, and call on the support of other sections of performers and workers, organized in rank-and-file committees, in their struggle with the video giants.