If you’ve been keeping track of voiceover news, you probably know about the SAG-AFTRA strikes against the gaming industry for payment of residuals to voiceover actors. Well, guess what? The strike, which lasted around a year, has finally come to an end and the best part is, the striking voiceover artists had their demands met.
The National Voting was held this month on the 7th. It included all of SAG-AFTRA’s voiceover members and the result was an overwhelming support for the Interactive Media Video Game Agreement. To be more specific, around 90% of the votes were cast in favor of the agreement.
Here’s what it means
The agreement was tentatively approved on 9th of October, this year, and it included the following demands
- New provisions for transparency
- Commitment from employers to work with SAG-AFTRA on dealing with the issue of vocal stress.
- A new bonus payment structure that ensures extra payments to voiceover artists according to the total number of sessions worked on.
Gabrielle Carteris, President of SAG-AFTRA, issued a statement in which she mentioned that the agreement would be the first step towards streamlining the work carried out by SAG-AFTRA members in the gaming industry.
She added that the new deal brings about key improvements especially with regard to fair compensation, payment structures, and transparency.
David White, National Director for SAG-AFTRA, thanked the Interactive Negotiating Committee and Ray Rodriguez, Chief Contracts Officer, for assisting in the negotiations. White stated that the negotiations had been long and hard, but was happy that it led to the current agreement, implying that it was all worth the effort.
Keythe Farley, Chair for the SAG-AFTRA Interactive Negotiating Committee, mentioned that the current agreement applies only to the video game industry, but it sets the foundation upon which negotiations can be carried out with other industries as well.
Exclusions
Some of the demands excluded from the agreement included the employer demands regarding performance fines and the removal of the union franchise. The proposal to exclude permanent staff from the bargaining agreement was also excluded.
Around 7220 of SAG-AFTRA’s voiceover artists had received voting cards and the final vote received certification from a third-party election service called Integrity Voting Systems. The results, as stated earlier, were in favor of the agreement.
The agreement already went into full effect in the first week of November and will expire in 2020.
ABOUT ROBERTA –
Roberta is a Professional AND award Winning International Voiceover Actor, as well as an accomplished on-camera actress and spokesperson. She lives in the beautiful San Francisco Bay Area and is the owner of Roberta Kennedy Voice Talent and RK Productions, Inc.
She voices for companies around the world using her state of the art, broadcast quality studio. She’s hired for commercials, web demos and explainer videos, product infomercials, documentaries, promo/imaging, political ads, e-learning videos, podcasts, guided real estate tours, telephony/IVR projects, high profile corporate presentations, video games and character animation.
Her voice is described as: playful, contemporary, compelling, commanding, inviting, sultry and smooth. A hip edge with sophistication, bold, warm, interesting and engaging are also commonly used adjectives to describe her voice.
Her home studio is equipped with ipDTL, ISDN and phone patch capability with lightning fast turnaround times! A voiceover talent with over 20 years of voiceover acting experience, she offers a full range of voiceover services at highly competitive rates & will work with your budget to help you promote your business to new levels of excellence!
To request a personal quote or audition and/or to review more of her credits & demos, feel free to visit her website: www.robertakennedy.com – or mail her at roberta@robertakennedy.com. You can even give her a call on (408) 313-7202.