SAG-AFTRA Launches Bid to Unionize Intimacy Coordinators

Two years after SAG-AFTRA indicated that it needed to convey intimacy coordinators into the union, the labor group has taken a primary step towards making that aim a actuality.

On Wednesday, the performers union stated it had filed a petition for a union election with the Nationwide Labor Relations Board. SAG-AFTRA is looking for to cut price nationally on behalf of intimacy coordinators employed by Alliance of Movement Image and Tv Producers member corporations, the leisure business’s prime studios and streamers.

The transfer arrives after the union has spent years making an attempt to manage the burgeoning skilled house, which ascended within the wake of the #MeToo motion. Intimacy coordinators are accountable for choreographing intimate scenes, and people involving nudity, on units, in addition to facilitating a dialogue between performers and creatives regarding this work.

“Working in scenes involving nudity or bodily intimacy is a number of the most susceptible work an actor can do. Intimacy coordinators not solely present help in navigating these scenes however additionally they create a security web for performers making certain consent and safety all through the whole course of,” SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher stated in a press release. “Intimacy coordinators have our backs on set and now it’s our flip to have theirs.”

A SAG-AFTRA spokesperson stated that the union had requested voluntary recognition from the AMPTP. The Hollywood Reporter has reached out to the AMPTP for remark.

Over the course of the previous few years, after HBO grew to become the primary model to require these professionals on scenes involving intimacy, SAG-AFTRA has rolled out varied initiatives seemingly geared toward professionalizing the house. In 2020, the labor group revealed necessities and protocols for intimacy coordinators, adopted by accreditation for a number of coaching applications in 2022.

In a press release, SAG-AFTRA’s organizing committee for intimacy coordinators said that the group is looking for normal protections offered to different unionized crafts in leisure. “Being a part of SAG-AFTRA will make sure the sustainability of our career,” the committee stated. “Proper now, intimacy coordinators work with none protections and with out standardized wages or advantages. We do that work as a result of we adore it, however a robust profession path wants greater than that to maintain it.”