Screen Actors Guild and TV Animation Producers Reach Tentative Agreement

SAG National Board to Consider Proposed Contract Later This Month; SAG Animation Negotiating Committee to Hold Caucus Meeting July 12

(Los Angeles, July 7, 2005) – Screen Actors Guild (SAG) announced today that a tentative agreement has been reached with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) on a new three-year contract covering television animation productions.

The new agreement includes a three percent increase in minimum pay effective July 1, 2005 and a one percent boost in contributions to the union’s benefits plans, beginning on January 1, 2006. Additionally, the Guild secured agreement from producers to recommend that the trustees of the union’s pension and health plans create a method to track earnings under this contract. To date, the TV animation contract is one of the only union agreements for which member earnings are not separately reported. This data is crucial to the Guild for future organizing and negotiations. SAG also granted producers the right to theatrically exhibit TV animation shorts for one week to qualify for Academy Award consideration.

“We’re pleased that we were able to reach an agreement with the industry for television animation programming,” said SAG National Executive Director and CEO Greg Hessinger. “The National Board will consider this contract at our upcoming meeting at the end of July. Now that we have successfully negotiated this important agreement, as well as the larger TV/Theatrical contract, we look forward to beginning talks with the industry on new basic cable agreements. Our focus in those talks will be on the residual structures for live action and animation programming on basic cable, where the terms covering such work have lagged behind the explosive growth of those platforms for too long.”

Negotiations between SAG and AMPTP on a new three-year television animation agreement began in May. Negotiators were strengthened by the support of more than 150 members of the television animation community, who met in a caucus last month to express their priorities in the negotiations. SAG plans to hold another caucus with those performers this Tuesday night at Guild headquarters in Hollywood to report in detail on the terms of the tentative agreement. The proposed contract will go the SAG National Board for ratification at their plenary on July 30.

The member-led negotiating committee was represented by Anne Talltree, the Guild’s chief negotiator for this agreement.

SAG's Animation Negotiating Committee will host a caucus meeting to report on the tentative agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers. All paid-up SAG members who work under the Television Animation Agreement should attend. The caucus meeting will be held 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, July 12, 2005 at Screen Actors Guild headquarters in the James Cagney Board Room, ground floor, 5757 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles, CA. Members unable to attend may email questions to sagcommunications@sag.org.