George Clooney among actors providing financial support to SAG-AFTRA
Geoge Clooney and a group of A-list actors have donated millions to the AMPTP to aid in providing more adequate health benefits and supplement other costs required by SAG-AFTRA after talks recently stalled with the studios following the strike.
The proposal was presented on October 18th. It was led by George Clooney, who was joined by other prominent stars such as Ben Affleck, Emma Stone, Tyler Perry and Scarlett Johansson.
One of the main changes will be to membership dues. As it stands, actors who are members of the SAG-AFTRA union are required to pay 1.575% of their covered earnings to the guild, which caps at $1 million. The proposal aims to remove the cap, which would allow some of the biggest earners in the union to pay even higher amounts to bring in over $50 million annually and help the cause.
Clooney spoke exclusively to Deadline about the situation. “A lot of the top earners want to be part of the solution,” he explained. “We’ve offered to remove the cap on dues, which would bring over $50 million to the union annually. Well over $150 million over the next three years. We think it’s fair for us to pay more into the union.”
He revealed that one of the strategies the group had suggested is a “bottom-up residual structure,” which means that those lowest on the call sheet – who are typically those who need paying earliest – will be paid first. He added: “These negotiations will be ongoing, but we wanted to show that we’re all in this together and find ways to help close the gap on actors getting paid.”
The SAG-AFTRA strike commenced on July 14th, which shut down many US-based movie and TV productions, affecting the cycle of several of the year’s most prominent titles, with SAG-AFTRA actors not appearing for interviews or premieres. Just last week, the major studios stalled the talks with the union.
See SAG-AFTRA’s Instagram post below.
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