Once again, it came down to the wire, and once again SAG-AFTRA and AMPTP agreed to extend their current contracts for movies and television for another 24 hours so they could continue negotiating.
The talks, which began on May 5, have been under a strict news blackout, and the extension announcement continued in that vein, offering no additional details.
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The new extension allows the 165,000 members of SAG-AFTRA to continue working under the current Minimum Basic Agreement of their existing three-year contract.
This is the first time that the new union created by the merger of the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists has come to the negotiating table as a single entity. The new guild is trying to create uniformity to television contracts for all of its members, as the current contracts were negotiated by their former separate unions.
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SAG-AFTRA is the last of the major creative guilds to reach a new deal, and the only one to push beyond the initial term of its contracts.
The Directors Guild of America agreed to a new pact in January that went into effect July 1. It’s good until June 30, 2017. Meanwhile, the Writers Guild of America came to an agreement in April on a contract that took effect May 2 and runs through May 2017.