TV and Film Actors Vote for Biggest Walkout in Four Decades

SAG-AFTRA, the union representing 160,000 television and movie actors, has announced a strike for the first time in 43 years after negotiations with studios over a new contract collapsed, with streaming services and artificial intelligence at the center of the standoff. At noon today, the actors will join screenwriters, who walked off the job in May, on picket lines in New York, Los Angeles and the dozens of other American cities where scripted shows and movies are made. The strike marks the first time in 63 years that the Actors and Writers unions have been out on strike at the same time.

“The eyes of the world and, particularly, the eyes of labor are upon us,” Fran Drescher, the president of SAG-AFTRA, said. “What happens to us is important. What’s happening to us is happening across all fields of labor. When employers make Wall Street and greed their priority and they forget about the essential contributors who make the machine run, we have a problem.”

Today's pickets will begin at noon and continue until 4pm. Next week a regular picketing schedule will begin, with pickets taking place from 9am to 1pm each day. Here in NYC, pickets will be at the following locations:

HBO/Amazon: 450 West 33rd Street

Paramount+: 1515 Broadway

Warner Brothers Discovery/Netflix HQ: 888 Broadway

NBC Universal: 30 Rockefeller Plaza, 49th Street between 5th and 6th Aves

Follow SAG-AFTRA on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube for strike news and updated picketing schedules, and check out their newly launched strike info website at sagaftrastrike.org! #SAGAFTRASTRONG #SAGAFTRASTRIKE