Picketing Actors

SAG-AFTRA voice actors hit the bricks today, picketing Electronic Arts on Lincoln Boulevard in Playa Vista. As picketers marched, the Guild said:

We know where our members stand, and we will put a deal in front of the SAG-AFTRA membership when we have an agreement our committee can recommend.

Their attempt to characterize their offer to make “additional compensation” payments at the time of session as equivalent to our “contingent compensation” proposal is disingenuous and misleading. These employers know full well that our issue is the creation of secondary payments that allow our members to share in the success of the most successful games. The employers’ offer purposely does not do that.

The video game companies claim they “did everything in their power” to reach an agreement with us. In fact, we accepted their offer of an upfront payment option in order to avoid triggering any secondary payments. This would have allowed them to preserve their existing compensation practices.

We simply asked to include secondary payments as an option in the agreement. This would allow other producers to avoid those upfront costs by agreeing to share their prosperity on the back end — if their game was successful. ...

The hangup to reach a deal appears to be the companies' terror at offering ANY kind of secondary payment, since that smacks of a kind of residual. And isn't that horrible?

(In case you're wondering, the Animation Guild stands in solidarity with the actors:.