By Emmanuel King
On November 1, SAG-AFTRA is scheduled to terminate the memberships of performers who have fallen behind on their union dues. Members in that group have until October 31 to pay what they owe or lose the card, and a growing member petition is asking the union to stop the clock. The petition, organized under the banner #SAVEOURCARDS, calls on SAG-AFTRA leadership to suspend dues-related terminations, build income-based relief and repayment options, and waive what it calls punitive reinstatement fees.
This is not a handful of members. The union’s constitution automatically terminates anyone who has not been in good standing for eighteen months because of nonpayment, which means the November wave is made up of working actors who fell behind during the industry’s long post-strike contraction and never got the stretch of work it would take to catch up. “Members cannot be expected to pay for the privilege of working in an industry that increasingly struggles to employ them,” the petition reads. “A union’s strength is measured by its ability to protect its members, especially when work is scarce.”
THE UNION HAS DONE THIS DIFFERENTLY BEFORE
The petition’s strongest argument is the union’s own history. During the pandemic, SAG-AFTRA’s executive committee approved a COVID-19 dues relief program that let members pay the minimum amount due in two installments and pushed terminations back an entire dues cycle. During the 2023 strikes, the union again offered dues extensions, installment plans and protections for members whose income had stopped through no fault of their own. The tools exist, and the union has used them twice in five years. For this dues cycle, no comparable relief program has been announced.
The timing is what makes members angry. Federal labor data published this year by the Bureau of Labor Statistics traces a decade of employment decline across the motion picture and video industries, and production has not returned to its pre-strike levels. Dues, meanwhile, keep arriving twice a year: an annual base amount plus work dues of 1.575 percent of covered earnings. For a member whose covered earnings have been near zero, the bill is for the right to keep a card they cannot currently use.
THE SAFETY NET HAS A HOLE IN IT
Falling behind carries a second penalty most members do not know about. The SAG-AFTRA Foundation’s Emergency Financial Assistance Fund, the program built for exactly this kind of crisis, requires members to be in good standing, and its rules bar it from paying union dues in the first place. So the member who falls behind on dues can lose access to the emergency help, and the emergency help could never have covered the dues anyway. And once a membership is terminated, getting it back is not a formality: reinstatement requires a new application and a reinstatement fee that can run as high as the full current initiation fee.
The dues wave lands on top of a separate squeeze. The health plan’s minimum earnings threshold rises every year, and the minimum for 2027 went up again, by $843 over 2026. In recent weeks, actors including Drake Bell and Heather Matarazzo have said publicly that they are in danger of losing their coverage for lack of qualifying work. Different rule, same math: an industry employing fewer people, and a union structure priced for the industry that used to exist.
WHAT A MEMBER CAN DO THIS WEEK
If you have received one of these letters, the deadline is real, but so are the options, and the week before October 31 is when they matter. Check your exact balance and standing in the union’s billing portal at sagaftra.org. The union runs dues installment plans, and its dues and hardship line, (866) 855-5191, is staffed Monday through Friday. Members who cannot pay in full should ask, on the record, about an extension or installment arrangement before the deadline rather than after it, because the eighteen-month termination is automatic once it triggers.
What happens next is a leadership decision. The petition asks for transparency as well as relief: how many members are being terminated, and who they are. However the union answers, November 1 will say something about what SAG-AFTRA believes it is for. Members fought to protect this industry in 2023. The question the petition is asking, in public, is whether the union will return the favorer.
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