![]() The terms of the agreement were all drawn from the long wish list of member proposals over the last couple of years: This deal brought members great gains as well as leverage against the AMPTP for the upcoming TV/Theatrical negotiation. In order to keep the plans on stable footing, the Trustees elected to lower members’ accrual rate to 2% with the long-term goal of raising it back to 3.5%. The plans took an almost catastrophic hit due to a plunge in contributions from losing TV to AFTRA, in addition to the implosion of the financial markets. At that time both staff and members had the same accrual rate (3.5%). ACCRUAL RATES: SAG took a big hit in 2008 by refusing to negotiate a new TV/Theatrical contract which lost SAG members over $100 million in pay raises and SAG Pension BENEFIT contributions. It is absolutely paramount that we attract and retain the best possible staff to fight day in and day out on our behalf. They’re prohibited from competing for our jobs, they don't earn residuals or royalties, and they could make twice as much money working against us at a studio or network. KEEP IN MIND: Staff are our representatives, negotiators and contract enforcers. In other words, it will cost members more money. If the union reduces their benefits, then it will have to offset that loss with higher salaries – salaries that come directly out of your dues money. Having an excellent benefits package for our staff – the people who negotiate and enforce your contracts, protect and distribute your residuals and look out for you in myriad other ways – helps us retain them in the face of competition from studios, advertisers, law firms and other companies. This is not good for members and we don’t want to go back to being the training camp for future studio executives. In the past 5 years, Netflix, CBS, NBC and others have lured our staff away – after we spent time and money to train them in the business – with higher salaries, big bonuses and company stock. ![]() IMPORTANTLY, having good benefits for our employees has helped us stop Producers from poaching our best staff and has SAVED our union money. The union trustees surely understand the complexity of this issue and we should all understand the tremendous benefit to members to have great benefits for our staff at limited cost to the union and minimal costs to the Plans. Accordingly, the pension benefit, including such things as the accrual rate for staff, cannot simply be yanked away. There were commitments made to our employees about their benefits at that time and in the future. All of this happened under different (previous) union leadership but still, the changes to staff benefits had to be accepted by the then-current employees of SAG, including by the many internal unions that represent our staff across the country. This freed up money for our union to focus on members. ![]() ![]() So it was a tremendous benefit to members when SAG-PPHP agreed to include this small group of additional participants (literally 1% of pensioners and 2% of health plan participants), thereby reducing substantially the amount of member dues money that the union had to spend to pay for staff benefits. That means it was OUR dues money paying for it. At the time, staff benefits were provided through private insurers at significant cost to the union’s general treasury. FIRST, SOME HISTORY: In the early 2000’s, when SAG-PPHP agreed to cover Screen Actors Guild staff, the union was bleeding money as a result of rapidly expanding staff benefit costs. Want to reduce their accrual rates? Then get ready to pay them much higher salaries to match their for-profit sector counterparts, costing us substantially more. Risking the loss of our most valued staff could cost us tens of millions in poor decisions and contract negotiations. They have virtually no effect on our bottom line, yet they allow us to retain top talent.
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