The entertainment industry is entering what labor negotiators describe as a particularly fraught contract cycle, with SAG-AFTRA, the Teamsters, and several craft unions all in contract negotiations with studio and streaming service employers within the same 12-month window. The convergence creates both the possibility of coordinated action that amplifies union leverage and the logistical challenge of managing multiple complex negotiations simultaneously.
The central disputes cut across unions: artificial intelligence usage rights, streaming residual formulas, and the definition of covered work in an era when AI tools are being deployed at multiple points in production have no clean precedent in existing contracts. The 2023 strikes established important principles but left significant detail to future negotiations, and employers are expected to push back hard against expansive interpretations of those principles in the current round.
