SAG-AFTRA Strike: An Actors Account – Nicole Signore

SAG-AFTRA Strike.

As almost everybody knows the writers and actors of Hollywood have gone on strike. We’ve seen the memes of greedy streaming corporations, and we’ve seen the picket lines, and most people reading this have an idea of what it’s about.

People are passionate about unions, one way or the other. We don’t do politics; leave your complaint card at home. This is big and it affects entertainment, which we do cover. And actor, stunt double, stand-in/body-double, SAG-AFTRA member and most importantly, Xperience Monthly alum Nicole Signore breaks it all down.

RRX: The first we heard about was the Writer’s Guild strike. And a lot went around about that, but a lot of people weren’t keen on the complexities of the fight. Now SAG-AFTRA is joined up, and people know a little bit more, if they want. What’s on the line here? Are both unions fighting for the same stuff?

NS:  The SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher has been the driving force to the narrative of the strike, which has now made the numbers larger and stronger for the WGA members and with this unity between unions (SAG-AFTRA members and WGA members.) This is one of the largest Hollywood shutdowns in history.

Both unions want different, but yet similar things, but the overall bottom line, what people should really understand and what is being said here is that these entertainment streaming services earn billions for exploiting their creative work force. For example, when you research the capital of Netflix gross it is over $4 billion a month. Advance to $50 billion a year That’s enough to produce 10, 100-million-dollar budgets per month. And they are crying poor-saying they can’t pay residuals to their employees! Which is the lifeline and support system for most entertainment industry professionals. In addition they want to replace most of those jobs with fewer days, less pay and most likely replace them all together with AI.

If you research the numbers- Max, the new HBO, earns 960 million per month. Hulu has 46.8 per month that’s a lot! Their greed is the biggest problem with the AMPTP, but they are so rich they don’t care if these everyday blue collar creators starve.

Why you ask? it’s all comes down to that never ending evil the very few at the top hoarding all the money and not paying it out fairly to the bottom of the people that work and deserve it.

RRX: SAG-AFTRA is huge in the news right now because of the strike, but maybe not everybody knows what types of industries are represented by, or have ties to, SAG-AFTRA. Is it just actors? And if so are we talking just the bigger names, or is it a broader base than that? And what are the qualifications for an actor or other professional to get their card?

NS: The Screen Actors Guild merged with it’s sister union The American Federation Of Television and Radio Artists in 2012 to make one Union SAG -AFTRA represents 160 thousand union workers including actors, voice over artists, radio broadcasters and TV hosts, etc. The WGA writers Guild Association comes in at a very modest twenty thousand members.

It’s very common for most people to think SAG-AFTRA  just represents your big Hollywood names who make millions like Tom Cruise, Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie and Chris Hemsworth, but not all of what the union represents are the faces that are familiar to Hollywood right now..

In fact, those famous faces only make up ten percent of the members SAG-AFTRA represent, the other  90% of actors in their database are barely making  $26k a year which is the minimum requirement to achieve their health and dental benefits or qualify for a retirement pension.

These are your day players, your background actors, your stand-ins and photo/body doubles and the actors working on lower tier independent projects. These are your creative like minds, workers that are driven with dreams to tell a story and they are the creative force who give 110% of their passion and good work ethic for very little pay in a very highly competitive industry, where hundreds of people are just submitting and competing for a background job.

Most of these members spend a lot of time working their way up and creating better and better material for their reels and with hopes and dreams of being part of a bigger picture.

I spent nearly 20 years working in the entertainment business as a union performer and over that time I worked on over 300 union movies as a stand in, stunt double, back ground actor, day player and principal performer and in other departments, and from my experience, a lot of my fellow union member friends were and are far more talented then most the big stars you see. In fact they may actually be more talented than the actual famous people you know, but unfortunately, most go unseen because it’s so difficult to make a fair living in this industry, and most are forced to give up their dreams to find other work to support themselves and their families.

But they never give up their talents, hopes and dreams  and it’s always inside them and that’s the beauty of it because that’s something  you can never take away: talent and passion.

These talented actors and writers that make up the 90% of SAG-AFTRA and WGA work force are the ones who have got a lot of their royalties and salaries stolen by these big conglomerate crooks. These are the payments which they need to survive, feed their families pay, their mortgages and rent and continue their crafts.

For example. if I was paid according to what my contract reads for residuals and I was paid properly for streaming services residuals, I’d be able to buy you lunch today instead of my burnt coffee I brewed in my coffee pot from home (hey, I’m not a barista but I’ve  played them on TV.)

To answer your question on how to join the union and To get your union card you need either one day as a principal performer with speaking lines in a SAG-AFTRA contract in TV film or three days on a union contract as a background performer  (which seems easy to get, but really it  isn’t) and that is because the union background work has to be at a higher salary which is $182 for 8 hours, then just general non-union background rate which tends to be for less and more than 8 hours, and in order to get a union work day as a principal performer it would require there to not be enough union actors hired in order to get that union working day. Which means a production has to not make the criteria for union actors hired because there wasn’t enough available union actors to hire and at that point they can unionize work for non-union in that day it’s called a “bump.”

Another way to get a union background day is to have a special skill like playing a guitar, or you have look like a famous actor or actress so you can stand in or double for them or you have to drive your car on a movie set. Bottom line is it’s basically a union rate of $182 for 8 hours of work to earn enough for a union day and that $182 had to be earned in 8 hours, not overtime. Being hired to work for another rate and more hours will not get you the “Taft Hartleys” you need (after the Taft Hartley Act, a report filed with SAG-AFTRA from a production set which lists non-union workers who were temporarily used as union workers.)

It’s usually harder to get into the unions in the more metropolitan areas like NYC because there are more union workers available for work and people hungry for work there so it’s less likely they will ever be below their quota. I earned my SAG card driving my car in the movie Salt, and my AFTRA card working as a reoccurring actor on a TV series Babylon Fields, but it never made it past the pilot season. It’s actually a little easier to get into the union in smaller counties like the capital region or hudson valley.

In addition to the requirements to join SAG, there is a $3000 joiner fee and semi-annual payments of around $120 every six months as well 2% of your earnings for each quarter.

So imagine going through all this to get the qualifications to join the union and then paying the joiner fee just to be told by these production companies, “We are only going to hire you for one day $182.00, scan you and use your image for life in a thousand different movies and never pay you again. This is one of the reasons SAG is striking.

This strike is representing background actors the most because these big streaming services want to take away their jobs for good and replace them with artificial intelligence – this is like the deep fakes you see on YouTube where a famous actors head is past on a stand-in’s body. This is what they want to do; not only will that out that actor out of work for life, it will also down size the need for casting directors that hire them. This strike is to help protect many positions in many different depths of the business and not just the actors and writers.

RRX: Everybody who’s on social media has heard about the strike, and it’s going to affect new shows coming out. But with streaming, I can sit it out by watching old shows, rewatching them, whatever. Is that helping SAG-AFTRA in this? If not, what can ordinary consumers do?

NS: You may be gearing up to watch a lot of reality TV or reruns vs scripted television then, because these two unions are fighting hard and not backing down. The one thing you don’t want to do is cross a stubborn actor. We are known for our dedication and tolerance to hardships.

What people can do to help the fight the cause would be to temporarily unsubscribe to your streaming services and put a dent in their wallets of the big players, make an impact that way and when their earning percentages go down they will think hmmm, I wonder why? It may feel like quantum leaping back to the past before all this new technology, but it will do the damage needed to make them squirm in their seats a bit.  you can also not support films with AI in them, you can educate yourself on the SAG website www.sag aftra.org or #sagaftrastrike

Or you can write the CEO’s and explain what you as a consumer or viewer think is fair for their employees if enough people write in it may get their attention – the consumers have a lot of the power.

RRX: Life is hectic. Job, doctor’s appointments, shopping, errands, not to mention washing spiders off my siding, ain’t got no time for that. So then, the ultimate question; what does it mean to me? What am I going to miss? How will my life be different as the strike wears on?

NS: Funny you mentioned washing spiders off siding I just pressure washed my house the other day, a house I worked hard for that the CEOs of these streaming services want to try to take away from me, and all of us, by not coming up with a earnest fair plan and by not playing fair.

So many other people in this industry are going to be in jeopardy of losing their  homes and most don’t qualify for unemployment. These are people that have to support their families and this just doesn’t affect the performers at the top or the writers but it also effect the technical sides of things, and people working in those departments; your sound engineers, your craft services, your hair and makeup, your overall creative people.

This also effects local businesses to as the entertainment business has created tons of jobs for people in the community and helped support local restaurants, hotels, venues, etc.

This strike will drive hundreds of thousands of dollars if not millions out of the community. Thousands of people, many right here in the capital region and hudson valley, are still trying to recover from the pandemics financial stress.

You ask me how this will affect others who are not in the film and TV industry, So it’s going to start in the TV/film world and it’s going to branch out to many jobs. Many people will be replaced by AI. I know this sounds like sci-fi, like the cute aliens on your covers, but it’s coming quicker than you think. And it’s starting with the entertainment industry because it’s the easiest industry to target first.

I like to think I’m doing my part by refusing to go to self-check out because I don’t want to put that cashier out of a job. Same as consumers being wise to what’s going on by sharing all this today.

RRX: Some of our readers are going to say, “well, screw those Hollywood people, like they don’t have enough money. And there’s that perception in the American public that if you make it in Hollywood, you can do drugs off a lion’s belly and you own the lion. Is that a true reflection of the film industry? Is it the high life for everybody?

NS: It’s not all “Hollywood people.”  It’s not all Chris Hemsworth and Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie or other faces you recognize. 90% of the screen actors guild are made up of people like you and me  the everyday blue collar workers hustling and pounding their pavement to put food on the table for their family, with minimum in their saving for emergencies, let alone strikes on top of the pandemic – these peoples are the ones with the big dreams showcasing themselves and self-taping/auditioning and competing with thousands of talented people for the next job, not knowing when it will come in and counting on residuals they did from past work to get by, and they are being robbed of them now. It’s literally a joke to see a residual come in at 5 cents which is less than the stamp they mailed it for and that happens a lot

RRX: Unions are political, and we don’t do political, kinda have a rule about it, but we do media, and some of the stuff in this fight, scares the crap out of us. AI scanning extras and using their likeness the way we use a laugh track, forever, without paying them? How does this issue cross party lines and hit everybody at their kitchen table on bill day?

NS: Not to get political, I’m defiantly not into politics even though my family was.  I’m more of an advocate to the union members. in 2015, I started the SAG Alliance for the Capital Region for actors and artist who are members of the SAG-AFTRA. I did this because many studios and productions looking to hire union actors did not know we existed here – they were shipping in union people from the city, meanwhile union actors from upstate NY were driving down to NYC for work and missing out on work. Finally, I said there is something wrong with this picture and I said enough with that, let me create a database and added all the actors I knew from over the years of working with them into a social media group, stuck a bunch of casting director in there and said let’s have a party!! Woohoo!! and from there, that group was created, a group on social media. We have thousands if not tens of thousands of union workers right here in the Capital District and Hudson Valley

All I can say is stay strong everyone who is fighting in this strike and it’s important that nobody scabs over. There are still jobs union workers are allowed to do before being tempted to take non-union work. It only weakens the cause over all.

Thank you.

Nicole Signore

Proud member of

SAG-AFTRA since 2007