The SAG–AFTRA Merger

Abstract

The merger of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) in March 2012 was the culmination of a thirty-two year struggle to bring the two powerful Hollywood performers’ unions together. As a response to larger trends in the media industries, this merger positions the newly converged union as a more unified front at the bargaining table. By analyzing the public discourse of SAG and AFTRA’s history from 1980 through the 2012 merger, this article situates actors and their unions within the industrial consolidation that began in the 1980s, looking at how and why SAG and AFTRA responded to (and often lagged behind) industry conglomeratization. I argue that by focusing on “convergence,” the merger rhetoric effectively masks one of the core issues that expedited it, namely, the diminishing importance of film and the growing importance of television and other media.