The re-elected General Secretary of UK actors union Equity has returned to the possibility of strike action if negotiations with UK producer trade body Pact and the streamers collapse.
Speaking at the Equity conference over the weekend, Paul Fleming said the 50,000-strong union is “industrial action ready” as it bids to strike a deal featuring its “most ambitious claims for our TV and film agreements in a generation.”
Negotiations with Pact, which represents hundreds of production companies, have been rumbling on for months and months. Equity’s proposal is comprised of five demands: pay, secondary payments (aka compensation), AI, guidelines around self tapes and an end to special stipulations from the streamers.
“We’re not changing our approach or our demands,” said Fleming at the conference in Derry, Northern Ireland. “The message is simple: we have put in the most ambitious claims for our TV and film agreements in a generation. Our union is industrial action ready.”
When the Pact-Equity negotiations first started, the actors strike in America had just ended and Fleming was clear at the time that strike action was possible. Since then that talk has dimmed but his proclamation over the weekend was the first public re-utterance of potential labor action since. As we have previously reported, stringent UK labor laws mean that an Equity strike would take a very different shape to SAG’s. For starters, only members who are working at the time of potential strike action can be balloted, rather than the entire base, making it harder to reach the 50% required for a strike.
Fleming urged Pact and the streamers to “meet their ambition” and said the claims stand “tariff or no tariff” in response to Donald Trump‘s proposal to slap 100% tariffs on foreign-shot movies and TV shows. Deadline has approached Pact for comment.
“Trump’s threat of tariffs on film was met with hysteria from producers, and sent Netflix’s share price tumbling,” said Fleming. “It revealed the fragility of our own industry – how it is more dependent on cash from the U.S. than strategy from the UK.”
The Pact negotiations, which govern the vast majority of TV series and indie film, have been going on for well over a year and we understand AI in particular has been a sticking point of late. Equity also has to strike similar deals with the BBC and ITV, with the BBC negotiations having concluded amicably while ITV remains in the trenches. The streamers have in the past approached negotiations in the form of ‘side letters’, which effectively takes the deal with Pact and adds a small premium for their original commissions.
Fleming was re-elected last weekend and his second five-year term will run until 2030. He was re-elected with 81% of the vote and with support from big names like Olivia Colman, Judi Dench, and Simon Pegg.
Meanwhile at the Equity conference over the weekend, delegates unanimously passed a motion calling on the trade union movement to campaign for further protections from artificial intelligence misuse for creative workers.
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