Vote NO on the SAG-AFTRA tentative agreement: Entertainment workers must join the broader struggle of the working class

The SAG-AFTRA leadership has announced a tentative agreement (TA) with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), presenting it with the now-familiar rhetoric of “historic gains” and “foundational improvements.” Members are being urged to ratify the deal quickly, to embrace “stability” and to celebrate the deal as proof that the collective bargaining system works.

Artists should do none of these things. This agreement must be rejected with the largest “no” vote possible and independent rank-and-file committees must be formed immediately to ensure workers’ control and unity across industries.

After the 118-day strike of 2023—a strike that demonstrated the extraordinary willingness of performers to sacrifice for their livelihoods and their futures—the union’s National Executive Director and Chief Negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland stated that members wanted “a fundamental change in the way this industry treats them: fairness in compensation for their labor, protection from abusive use of AI technology.” He claimed that the “new contract delivers on these objectives and makes substantial progress in moving the industry in the right direction.”

It did nothing of the sort. Instead the entertainment industry entered the “Great Hollywood Recession,” which has seen production in Los Angeles and everywhere else implode. Shoot days in Los Angeles fell by 30 to over 50 percent from their five-year averages in virtually every measurable category of production. At the same time, the drive to integrate AI into the production pipeline has grown exponentially. 

The financial oligarchy that owns the studios and the streaming conglomerates has never been richer. The same corporate oligarchs who plead poverty at the bargaining table flaunted their grotesque wealth at the 2026 Met Gala and similar soirées in Hollywood. The collective wealth of the top US billionaires, including Musk, Bezos and Ellison, increased by $698 billion last year.

The ruling class’s contempt for workers, who are struggling with skyrocketing gas and food prices, was summed up by the fascist president in the White House. Asked whether he considered the impact of the US war against Iran on “Americans’ financial situations,” the gangster-president replied, “Not even a little bit.”

In the next few years there will be even greater demands for belt-tightening to fund the administration’s request for $200 billion in supplemental funding for its criminal war against Iran and a $1.5 trillion military budget for next year.

For the studio moguls and tech billionaires, AI is a way to eliminate actors, editors and other workers. In the hands of working people, however, this revolutionary technology could be used to sharply reduce work hours, exponentially increase living standards and encourage an explosion of creativity. A unified fight against mass layoffs and for the collective ownership of these technologies would also demonstrate that the only ones who are inessential to society are the financial parasites who enrich themselves from the collective labor of working people whom they want to throw in the streets.

The rejection of this sellout deal and the launching of a strike would also have vast consequences for cultural development. As the WSWS raised during the 2023 strike:

Shutting down film and television production is a threat and a challenge to the corporate throttling of artistic freedom and creativity. Industry CEOs without an original thought in their heads preside for the most part over the production of a series of comic book fantasies and “action blockbusters,” one emptier and more miserable than the last. Writers and actors who crave doing serious, enduring work—significant examples of which have begun to emerge in recent years—can only look on in horror at the predominance of rubbish, and the deliberate effort by the studios and networks to turn audience members’ brains to mush. The strike movement of the writers and actors must encourage a turn to realism in film and television production, as artists are brought up against the harsh facts of contemporary social life.

It is in this context that the sellout deal brought back by the SAG-AFTRA bureaucracy must be examined.

The four-year term

The single most significant concession in this agreement is one that will receive the least attention in the union’s marketing campaign: the four-year contract length. The industry standard has been three years. That difference is not trivial. The studios are in the middle of the most consequential technological and economic restructuring in the history of Hollywood. AI deployment is accelerating, streaming conglomerates are eliminating mid-budget productions, employment has collapsed since 2022 and the corporations are restructuring around permanently lower labor costs. The studios want labor peace precisely while completing this transition.