SAG-AFTRA & Teamsters Local 399 Leaders Show Solidarity With WGA At Opening Day Of Contract Talks

Gene Maddaus Senior Media Writer The SAG-AFTRA Health Plan announced on Monday that it has agreed to pay $15 million to older performers who lost health coverage due to eligibility changes made in 2020. Under a settlement agreement, the health plan will also pay up to $5.6 million over the next eight years to older performers who no longer qualify for coverage. The settlement resolves a class action lawsuit filed in December 2020 by Ed Asner, a former SAG president, and nine other performers. Asner and the other plaintiffs alleged that the plan had discriminated against older members by raising the earnings floor to qualify for health benefits and excluding residuals from the earnings threshold. The plaintiffs said the change forced nearly 12,000 participants off the plan.

A lawsuit filed against the SAG-AFTRA Health Plan, which claimed that changes to eligibility for benefits “illegally discriminated” against older members, has been settled. The suit was filed in federal court in December 2020 by former SAG president Ed Asner and nine other SAG-AFTRA members. The Health Plan, which had been facing staggering deficits, said that the changes were necessary to keep it from going broke.

Cynthia Littleton Business Editor The WGA and Hollywood’s major employers are set to resume contract talks on Wednesday as the sides aim to make progress in sorting through complicated compensation issues and averting a strike. Negotiators for the Writers Guild of America and Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers are expected to sit down again in person Wednesday morning at AMPTP headquarters in Sherman Oaks. The WGA had planned to take a two-week break after March 31 to begin the process of a strike authorization vote, with talks tabbed to resume the week of April 17. The guild’s current three-year contract expires on May 1. A rep for the AMPTP declined comment. The WGA did not immedately respond to a request for comment.

Although Hollywood’s Covid return-to-work protocols are set to expire on May 12, performers and background actors involved in intimate scenes – and those involving extreme physical exertion – will be allowed through July to request self-administered Covid testing of performers with whom they will be working in close or intimate contact.

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With its contract talks with the AMPTP set to start this morning, the WGA is telling its members in a new video what to expect in the coming weeks amid an expected media blackout on the negotiations.

Just hours before the WGA and the studios are scheduled to start stridulous talks on a new overall contact, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers have decided to publicly play nice, firmly.

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SAG-AFTRA has reached a tentative settlement with the studios regarding unpaid Covid testing stipends. The stipends in question are for Covid testing payments on days when performers also were paid for fittings.