SAG-AFTRA Board Takes No Action On Changing Covid-19 Vaccination Mandates Before Sept. 2 30 Deadlines

Hollywood’s Covid-19 vaccination warrants were the subject of a special three-hour meeting of the SAG-AFTRA National Council today, which ended with no action to change existing policy, which allows employers, to depending on the production, to require vaccinations as a working condition, subject to the restrictions contained in the sector’s return to work contract. The agreement expires on September 30th.

Industry-wide talks to renew the contract will begin on Monday. Leaders from the SAG-AFTRA, DGA, IATSE, Teamsters and Basic Crafts trade unions as well as representatives of companies and the Alliance of Film and Television Producers will participate.

SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher, who called the special meeting last month, was accompanied to the board meeting on Saturday by her own epidemiologist, Dr. Harvey Rish. He is emeritus professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health and in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at the Yale School of Medicine. Drescher and Rees felt it was now safe to remove the warrants.

SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher calls for a rethink of Hollywood’s COVID vaccination mandate

SAG-AFTRA also brought its epidemiologist to the meeting: David Michaels, epidemiologist and professor at the George Washington University School of Public Health. Michaels, who served as Deputy Secretary of Labor during the Obama administration, believes the mandates should be kept because vaccines continue to protect against transmission and infection. Earlier this week, the guild’s Security Commission met and recommended continuing the existing policy.

The latest figures show that deaths from Covid have exceeded the number of deaths from flu, traffic accidents and drug overdoses in Los Angeles County this year.

Return-to-work protocols require employers to notify trade unions when they decide to require vaccinations as a condition of employment. Based on an analysis of these notifications, SAG-AFTRA found that only 25.8% of productions required vaccination in the first six months of 2022.

Here is the list of 27 pages. Manufactured by SAG-AFTRA, which has a mandatory vaccination policy starting August 29 this year.

Opponents of the mandates argue that the vaccine is not effective against the spread of the latest sub-variants of the virus and that many employers adhere to return-to-work provisions that allow exceptions to the mandate for medical reasons or sincere religious beliefs. They also claim that members who refuse to be vaccinated are discriminated against in the workplace.

Proponents of the protocols argue that because vaccines have been shown to be safe and effective and only a quarter of indications require vaccination, there are still plenty of jobs for those who cannot or cannot be vaccinated.

First adopted on September 21, 2020 and regularly expanded, return-to-work protocols have been widely recognized to keep workers safe and the industry up and running for the past two years.