What’s Next On The Labor Front After WGA’s Tentative Agreement? Quite A Lot, Actually

deadline.com:

Now that a tentative agreement has been reached to end the Writers Guild’s strike, SAG-AFTRA, of course, is next, with IATSE waiting in the wings.

When the Directors Guild reached its own deal for a new contract without a strike back on June 3, the WGA, which had already been on strike since May 2, insisted that it wouldn’t accept the industry’s longtime practice of “pattern bargaining,” in which the next union to come to the bargaining table is expected to follow suit and make a similar deal.

With the WGA, after 146 days of picketing, achieving somewhat – some might say significantly – better terms than the DGA did, SAG-AFTRA might see the WGA deal, if not as a “pattern” to follow, then at least as a template to build upon.

This could be the case for many, but certainly not all, of SAG-AFTRA’s demands for better wages, a whole new way of calculating streaming residuals and safeguards against potential abuses arising from the use of artificial intelligence. RELATED: From ‘Suits’ To Nuts, Streaming Residuals Explained That could prove to be a new re-starting point once SAG-AFTRA’s negotiations resume.