LOS ANGELES, Nov 8 (Reuters) - The SAG-AFTRA actors' union reached a tentative agreement with Hollywood studios to resolve the second of two strikes that rocked the entertainment industry as workers demanded higher pay in the streaming TV era, the union said on Wednesday.
The 118-day strike will end officially just after midnight, SAG-AFTRA said in a statement. The group's national board will consider the deal on Friday, and the union said it would release further details after that meeting.
Members of SAG-AFTRA walked off the job in mid-July asking for an increase in minimum salaries, a share of streaming service revenue and protection from being replaced by "digital replicas" generated by artificial intelligence (AI).
The union said negotiators had reached a preliminary deal on a new contract with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), which represents Walt Disney , Netflix and other media companies.
finance.yahoo.com/...
The breakthrough came after a tense week. Studio chiefs on Friday presented what they called their "last, best and final" offer, which the executives said addressed the guild's demands. The two sides met Saturday afternoon to go over the proposal and company representatives stressed that they needed movement from SAG-AFTRA to be able to salvage the current television season.
SAG-AFTRA's negotiating committee then spent four days scrutinizing and debating the proposals before delivering the union's answer.
On Wednesday, after another marathon day of internal discussions among negotiating committee members, studio chiefs gave the union a 5 p.m. deadline to deliver an answer.
The hard-fought accord ends one of Hollywood's most fraught periods of labor conflict and the longest ever actors' strike.
www.yahoo.com/...