The strike by around 2,500 video game and voice actors who are members of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) has entered its fifth week. According to media reports, there has been no progress on the issues between the parties. Aside from negotiations between the union and individual companies and games that have been conducted behind the backs of the video game actors, there have been no formal negotiations at all.
SAG-AFTRA announced last week that no negotiations would be scheduled until September, leaving bureaucrats free to attend the Democratic National Convention and the lavish activities of that corporate party while video game artists are left out in the cold and the future of their professions is in question.
The artists’ previous contract expired about 22 months ago. Union leadership said in a Zoom meeting on Monday that they had not yet decided how long the new contract they negotiated would last or whether it would take effect retroactively.
The SAG-AFTRA meeting showed that officials haven’t given much thought to improving working conditions for video gamers. The Zoom call underscored the harsh fact that striking video gamers face two enemies: the companies and their own union.
When a worker asked about secondary compensation or royalties, the union representatives could not have expressed their disdain more clearly. They replied that they had decided to focus all their attention on the issue of artificial intelligence (AI) this year and therefore issues such as royalties, which they tried The last opportunity to work on this would have to wait until the next round of negotiations.
While SAG-AFTRA officials claim they are focusing all their attention on AI and avoiding secondary, “distracting” issues like fair compensation, what does their “focus” actually mean? In reality, they are downplaying the threat of AI and refusing to clarify what it means for workers.
When a caller kept repeating how stupid the corporations were and that copyright law provided sufficient protection against AI, the officials, instead of correcting her and clarifying the matter, reinforced her view. Then they revealed their own view, claiming:
These companies believe that they have more influence than the film and television companies because of their business practices and the relative magnitude of their output in relation to the total resources devoted to developing a game.
In other words, companies believe they are in a strong position because they are in a billion-dollar industry and pay their talent peanuts. But this is the result of one lousy contract after another that fails to take into account “secondary considerations” like living wages and royalties.
A performer approached SAG-AFTRA bureaucrats and asked why there was only one picket at a time, when there were multiple pickets outside studios in Los Angeles and New York City during last year’s actors’ strike.
The reaction showed that the union is completely unprepared and unwilling to develop a serious strategy. The strike was forced upon it by the recalcitrance of the companies, who were not prepared to make any concessions and were not afraid of the SAG-AFTRA bureaucracy or the anger of the members. The union’s only goal is to end this strike as quickly as possible and return to business as usual, causing many of its members to lose their jobs or careers.
The first answer to the question about the picket line was this:
We take a slightly more tactical approach, which is not necessarily surprising, but more of a potentially difficult, disruptive approach, and also the way of producing in this area is a little more nuanced and different. So that’s what we do. We’re also very focused on that because, you know, in this area, there really is a whole print area that exists online, and so digital actions are also of great interest and importance to us.
This is double-talk and every serious employee knows it. Digital measures? Apart from the occasional tweet, there have been none so far.
This first official handed the microphone to National Organizing Director Maggie Russell-Brown, who said:
No, I mean, I think you got it right, right? I mean, that’s… you know, strikes are meant to be disruptive. There are different tactics that we need to use depending on what work is being done and how we can disrupt the normal operations of companies. While picketing is great and we definitely need it, there are other actions that we’ve decided to take to be disruptive. Great.
There was no mention of what these measures would be, whether any had already taken place or whether more were planned in the future – or even how workers could get involved, other than through the union’s website, which essentially tells them to carry on as before.
Another SAG-AFTRA official then argued that certain companies
may have signed a preliminary (agreement), which makes their status as a good guy or a bad guy a little bit complicated because they may be affected by a strike. But they may also have signed a project that provides AI protection. Then they may also have another project that falls under Side Agreement 6 (side agreement to the contract that allows companies to continue production of projects that were already in production 60 days before the strike started). And then they may have a third (project) that is affected by a strike. So in this case it may be a little unclear who is a good guy and who is a bad guy.
The reason this is all “complicated” is because SAG-AFTRA has signed one contract after another containing such provisions. In addition, union officials are trying to wear down workers by forcing their members to become strikebreakers by signing interim agreements with individual companies, thereby weakening the strike as a whole.
Officials reiterated on Monday that they have already signed over 50 interim contracts with individual companies or games. These contracts were signed by decree, such as the one with Replica earlier this year or the one with Narrativ last week, without a vote being held or any indication during the negotiations that they would even take place.
Bureaucrats claim they want to provide workers with protection through AI, but aside from minor language changes, none of the contracts signed by SAG-AFTRA—either for video game actors or for film and television actors—provide any kind of control mechanism or means to protect actors from intentional abuse of their persona by AI.
The divide that separates SAG-AFTRA officials from rank-and-file workers was highlighted by the remark of a member of the negotiating team who, astonishingly, said:
One of the things that I think has puzzled us all this time is why we (the companies and the union) have not been partners in this fight, but have sat on the other side of the table, because the threat to them is just as great as the threat to us.
In fact, the union resolves this “confusion” by acting as a “partner” of the companies. in practicewhile verbally portraying themselves as their opponents.
While the assembled SAG-AFTRA bureaucrats hemmed and hawed, many artists demonstrated that they were aware of the seriousness of the fight ahead of them.
One employee on the conference call expressed concern: “When I think about whether or not to audition for a new job, have I already let my voice out of the bag, so to speak?” Another described the use of AI without compensation as plagiarism and identity theft.
And a third employee wanted to know what could be done to inform other cast members on social media about roles they turn down due to concerns about artificial intelligence, given that a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) must be signed before an audition.
The Zoom meeting revealed the bankruptcy of the SAG-AFTRA bureaucracy, which acts as an arm of corporate management trying to oversee the adoption of AI as smoothly as possible.
The only way forward is to take the fight out of the hands of the bureaucracy and put it under the democratic control of the video game artists themselves, in grassroots committees that formulate real demands for real protection and real compensation for their creative contribution.
