OUR OWN FREE ONLINE CASTING SERVICE

ISSUE: Our members are currently forced to pay, perhaps illegally, for access to work opportunities via for-profit, online casting services, including ActorsAccess, CastingFrontier, and CastingNetworks. Annual memberships for these platforms alone can cost almost $600 per year, almost triple our union’s annual base membership dues.

WHY IS THIS AN ISSUE:
These existing companies share no data with SAG-AFTRA, have lax security with our members’ private information, and allow casting, productions, agents, and managers to conduct employment business in violation of our union’s contracts, policies, and membership rules.

WHAT IS OUR SOLUTION:
MembershipFirst wants to invest in developing our own, cutting-edge, free online casting platform for our members to replace the need for using these external, for-profit platforms, saving our members tens of millions of dollars per year.

In addition, by allowing pre-members to use the platform for a reasonable fee, we can generate considerable revenue while tracking, supporting, and incentivizing their progression into the union.

In the interim, we will negotiate with the AMPTP and JPC and work with the CSA and PGA to ensure that no online casting services can be used for signatory production casting that charge our members anything, including profile and media hosting fees and submission fees for jobs.

We will also negotiate with the existing online casting services to ensure the security of members’ data, and require data-sharing for the enforcement of union contracts and rules.