USAN “Accomplishments”

USAN’s Legacy: A Decade of Failures, Givebacks, and Union Weakening

For over a decade, USAN (United Screen Actors Network) — and now The Coalition2025 — has marketed itself as the leadership voice of reason and strategy for SAG-AFTRA. But what they’ve actually delivered is a slow and steady unraveling of union power—dressed up in hollow headlines and empty phrases like “historic gains.”

Let’s be clear: USAN’s accomplishments are not victories for the members. They are wins for the employers.

💼 A Union Influenced by Employers — Literally

Let’s start with the elephant in the room: USAN is not a grassroots movement of rank-and-file actors. It’s an employer-influenced slate with deep ties to corporate interests. Consider Tom Hanks, who co-founded Playtone—a production company that directly benefits from weakened union standards. Why is he backing a so-called union leadership? When producers hold sway over union strategy, it’s not a negotiation—it’s a surrender.

🏥 Loss of Healthcare and Pension Protections

Under USAN’s watch, thousands of members lost access to union healthcare and saw their pension futures gutted. The most vulnerable members—background actors, seniors, disabled performers—were hit hardest, with revised eligibility thresholds that priced them out of benefits they paid into for years.

And when this crisis was brewing? USAN knew about it for years. They just didn’t act.

🎭 Background Performers Left Behind

What did background actors get? Scraps. Background performers were promised more protections, more work, and better pay. But what actually came out of the last few contracts? Anemic increases that don’t even keep up with inflation—and no meaningful protections from AI threats or exclusivity abuse.

📺 Streaming Residuals: The Joke That Isn’t Funny

Streaming changed everything—except the union’s ability to negotiate fair residuals. USAN’s “historic” deals gave studios exactly what they wanted: flexibility, opacity, and cost savings. For performers? Residuals that don’t even buy a tank of gas.

Where’s the transparency? Where’s the data-sharing? Why do the same handful of companies get to decide the value of your performance?

🔄 Years of Givebacks, Dressed Up as Progress

While USAN’s emails brag about “gains,” any working actor knows the truth: every contract under their leadership has involved givebacks, rollbacks, or loopholes. Whether it’s allowing short seasons to avoid series regular protections, or shrinking the union’s jurisdiction, these aren’t accidents. They’re choices.

Strategic retreats, they called them. Permanent losses, in reality.

🙈 A Leadership That Ignores Its Members

When members cried out over AI clauses, residuals, and healthcare, USAN didn’t listen—they spun. Their communications team spent union dues to print postcards and banners telling members what a great job they were doing… while many members were literally losing their homes and careers.

Member feedback? Dismissed. Town halls? Controlled. Dissent? Silenced or labeled “divisive.”

🔥 And in the End… A Strike They Caused

Let’s not forget: USAN had years to fix these problems before the 2023 strike. But they didn’t. They passed weak contracts and ran out the clock. By the time the AMPTP refused to budge, the damage was already done—and the members were left to walk the picket lines that USAN made inevitable.

They didn’t lead us into a stronger future. They led us into a strike—and even then, tried to control the narrative every step of the way.