SAG, AFTRA Decline to Strike Games Industry

Dachannien writes "The Los Angeles Times is reporting that the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists have voted against going on strike against the video and computer games industry. The agreement reached between the unions and several participating companies, including Electronic Arts and Activision, increases minimum pay for voice actors to $695 per hour immediately, and increases contributions to the unions' benefits funds. Voice actors will not receive residuals on games that sell well, which was a major sticking point for publishers. While the vote turned out with a majority voting in favor of striking, supermajorities of three-fourths of SAG members and two-thirds of AFTRA members were required in order to cause a strike."

Comments

But voice acting is /hard/!

[yotto]

They totally deserve $700/hour for this.

Re:Let me be the first to say:

[KDR_11k]

They justify it by saying they're not working more than ten hours per job anyway. I'd say that clearly justifies making your grunt staff do the VA then.

If they can't afford to live on a decent hourly wage they should look for another job or go to Japan or something. Voice acting isn't a fulltime job, you're fully capable of working as, say, a coder at a dev house and only doing VA when they need it. Considering those "actors" usually do piss-poor performances the money is clearly not justified.

Re:Let me be the first to say:

[mwvdlee]

If I say I can only work half the time, will my boss double my salary? ;)

NOT $695 per hour

[porcupine8]

If you RTFA, it's $695 per four hour recording session.

Still, I'd take those wages. Of course, if you're a struggling actor, that might be all you make that month.

Hmm, vioce acting, eh?

[senocular]

Good news mom; you can stop paying for college. I'm giving up my career as a programmer and becoming a voice actor!

Re:fucking unions...

[saarbruck]

I'm a game dev. On my last project, our "official" crunch consisted of mandatory 60-hour weeks for 3 months to meet our ship date (unofficially it went on much longer than that). The ship date then slipped after everyone was already exhausted, sick, and really pissed of. So my reaction to these voice actors and their prima donna attitude is they can go fsck themselves. If the dev team is treated so shamefully, why on earth should someone providing the voice of Officer Payday get $695/hr. and residuals?

That said, I firmly believe unions are the only thing that will fix the inhumane working conditions in the game industry. My mother and my father-in-law are both union shop stewards and despite the common Slashdot grumbling about corruption and administrative morass, I've seen first hand how unions can force unethical (or just uninformed) employers to treat people with fairness and decency, and just plain obey the law.

I'm in the games industry because I love working on games. Some people may say that I should put up with the crap to do what I love, but they'd be wrong. Companies exist to make a profit, which often means a callous disregard for the human element of the workforce. I would gladly join a software engineering union if it got me reasonable working hours, compensation for overtime, and a formal procedure for resolving grievances--even if it resulted in a pay cut.