The Screen Actors Guild’s strike-ending deal has entered its final step

The Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) reached an agreement in principle with the heads of Hollywood studios, thus putting an end to the 118-day actors’ strike. Yesterday, SAG-AFTRA announced that its national board of directors approved the agreement, 86 percent to 14 percent, and recommended union members vote to ratify it.

The agreement is still technically on hold until union members vote on Dec. 5, although the guild says some of its features will take effect during the ratification process, such as some wage increases. SAG-AFTRA offered a summary of the deal in its announcement:

Deadline reported that the 86 percent support on the national board was not as high as expected and that it was unclear how many voted against it due to the guild’s voting system.

Drescher discussed the long negotiations that led to the agreement during a press conference yesterday. She detailed the back-and-forth that saw the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers continually refuse the guild’s requests. She said the studios “heard that something had to be done or it wasn’t going to end well.” So they worked internally to find a kind of modality that would work for all the studios: the bonus structure.

Drescher went on to say that while the guild “knew this wasn’t going to accomplish what we needed to accomplish,” they had to “understand that we had to make this work if we wanted to get into another pocket.” Ultimately, she said, “what mattered was that we got into another pocket and we did it. I had to… think about that and not make the perfect the enemy of the GOOD.