Watch SAG President Fran Drescher’s Emotional Takedown of Hollywood Studios: ‘You People Are Crazy’ (Video)

thewrap.com:

formally announcing an actors’ strike and officially putting Hollywood at a production standstill, SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher gave a rousing opening salvo of a speech that exclaimed that “the jig is up” for Hollywood studios’ continued abuses towards its labor workers. “You people are crazy — why are you doing this?” she said while recounting the weeks of negotiations that have left many in the union feeling “insulted.”“From the time negotiations began on June 7, SAG-AFTRA staff and the members of our negotiating committee have worked overtime devoting their evenings, weekends and holidays to achieving a deal that would ensure a sustainable future for the acting profession,” chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland said before handing the mic to Drescher. “But despite our team’s efforts, the AMPTP has remained steadfast in its commitment to devaluing the work of our members.”The strike will begin late Thursday at midnight.Read Drescher’s fiery speech in full below.

You can watch the full SAG-AFTRA press conference in the video above. Thank you, Duncan, and thank you, everybody for coming to this press conference today.

It’s really important that this negotiation be covered because the eyes of the world — and particularly the eyes of labor — are upon us.

What happens here is important because what’s happening to us is happening across all fields of labor. When employers make Wall Street and greed their priority and they forget about the essential contributors that make the machine run, we have a problem.