SAG-AFTRA is using the strike to push for more influencers and content creators to unionize

After the SAG-AFTRA strike began last week, the union released official guidelines for online influencers and content creators on how they can support those on strike and how they can manage existing contracts and sponsorship deals. It was a somewhat interesting move, since we don’t always think of influencers doing the same job as actors (even though they are fairly similar, on some level), but SAG-AFTRA has actually been inviting online content creators to join for a couple of years and it seems like that’s just the beginning.

Speaking with The Washington Post, SAG-AFTRA’s chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland said that the union is planning to use this strike to bring more influencers on board, both to bolster their ranks and to prepare it and the influencers for future labor disputes with companies like Apple and Amazon—which are involved in both the movie/TV world and the digital entertainment world. As multiple people point out in the Washington Post piece, a lot of influencers do the work of producers, writers, editors, and actors, which means a lot of demands on their shoulders.

SAG-AFTRA’s initial guidelines for influencers specifically asked them not to take on any new promotional deals for content made by struck companies—which is to say the studios that comprise the AMPTP—or even to make public social media posts “as a fan” promoting struck work (a nod to the blurring of the line between an influencer as an “influencer” and as a person). The guidelines also noted that they apply to non-union influencers as well, and that doing any work for a struck company during the strike—scabbing—would prevent those influencers from being admitted into SAG-AFTRA in the future. That would be an even bigger problem if Crabtree-Ireland gets his wish and makes content creators a bigger part of the SAG-AFTRA membership, because scab influencers wouldn’t get the union support that their colleagues would get and it would make it more difficult for them to get sponsorship deals.

There’s also a point to be made, and the aforementioned Washington Post story touches on this, that bringing influencers into the SAG-AFTRA strike potentially makes it a lot more powerful, since a lot of young people watch people talk about things on YouTube or TikTok more often than they actually watch the things. With influencers joining the strike and speaking out against the greed of the AMPTP, that puts a lot more pressure on the studios.