Two years after SAG-AFTRA indicated that it wished to carry 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 in search of to cut price on behalf of intimacy coordinators employed by Alliance of Movement Image and Tv Producers member corporations, the leisure business’s high studios and streamers.
The transfer arrives after the union has spent years trying to regulate the burgeoning skilled area, which ascended within the wake of the #MeToo motion. Intimacy coordinators are chargeable for choreographing intimate scenes, and people involving nudity, on units, in addition to facilitating a dialogue between performers and creatives relating to this work.
“Working in scenes involving nudity or physical intimacy is some of the most vulnerable work an actor can do. Intimacy coordinators not only provide assistance in navigating these scenes but they also create a safety net for performers ensuring consent and protection throughout the entire process,” SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher stated in a press release. “Intimacy coordinators have our backs on set and now it’s our turn to have theirs.”
The Hollywood Reporter has reached out to the AMPTP for remark.
Over the course of the previous few years, after HBO turned the primary model to require these professionals on scenes involving intimacy, SAG-AFTRA has rolled out numerous initiatives seemingly geared toward professionalizing the area. 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 acknowledged that the group is in search of commonplace protections supplied to different unionized crafts in leisure. “Being part of SAG-AFTRA will ensure the sustainability of our profession,” the committee stated. “Right now, intimacy coordinators work without any protections and without standardized wages or benefits. We do this work because we love it, but a strong career path needs more than that to sustain it.”
