SAG-AFTRA Board Overwhelmingly Approves Deal With AMPTP That Sharply Limits Exclusivity In TV Actors’ Personal Service Agreements

deadline.com:

SAG-AFTRA‘s national board voted overwhelmingly today to approve a new agreement with the AMPTP that will sharply limit exclusivity terms in actors’ personal service agreements that hold series regulars off the market and unable to work for unreasonably long periods of time.

The vote was 95.5% in favor, 4.5% opposed, and does not require membership ratification as this was a mid-term modification of the guild’s existing film and TV contract.It’s a major victory for the guild, which has been trying to curtail the practice for more than a decade.

SAG-AFTRA officials say the breakthrough was made possible by the guild’s lobbying efforts on behalf of a bill they sponsored in the California legislature that would curtail exclusivity provisions.

That bill, AB 437 – dubbed the Let Actors Work (LAW) Act – was moving close to passage by the full legislature but is now expected to be withdrawn in light of the agreement the guild has reached with the companies.Concurrently, SAG-AFTRA members are in the process of ratifying a separate new contract with Netflix that includes similar changes to its options and exclusivity provisions that will give the streaming giant’s series regulars the right to work on other programs when they’re not working on their Netflix shows.SAG-AFTRA’s Lobbying Efforts Helped Seal Exclusivity Deals With Netflix & AMPTP“The companies would not have entertained reopening this issue during the term of the contract were it not for this legislation,” Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, the guild’s national executive director, told Deadline. “We’ve been working on this for over 10 years, and we hadn’t been able to get them to budge meaningfully on exclusivity.