Absolutely sign the petition (IF YOU'RE A SAG-AFTRA MEMBER!), but also here's a primer for the curious on what it means to be an actor. With the caveat that this deserves about a million footnotes I don't have the time to include b/c (hah!) I'm working for this insurance.. https://twitter.com/ClarkFreeman/status/1294323519539433473

So this is a union where the majority of its members don't earn enough to qualify for insurance. (something like 80%, correct me if I'm wrong) Under the old plan, you had to earn 18K to be covered at all and 35K for a much superior plan.

Starting Jan '21, everyone is going to need to earn 26K to get any coverage.

Remember: this is also a union where the discrepancy in earnings among its members is *vast*. Show me another union where most members make no money and a few make millions and those in the middle could be unemployed forever starting tomorrow, who knows?

Further, this is an industry where rates have been driven down and production looks very different than it did 30 years ago. Micro-budget features; 10 episode seasons instead of 22; the advent of streaming/web/app/whatever tf.

So making enough to qualify for insurance has become even harder. You have to be working A LOT, which - remember - you cannot control. And if you're a woman over 40? lololololol

Here are the *basic* changes, as laid out in the petition, as we *seem* to understand them *so far*. We're still getting info and the full scope is unclear.

*sighs*. Look, it has always been almost impossible to make a living as an actor. I'm old enough to remember the good old days and even the good old days were shit. But there are almost no yeoman actors now. And that was before this announcement.

Still, the one thing we always had (besides the eternal hope that something big could happen, maybe, possibly, eventually, if you were lucky) was a great health plan. That if you could at least keep your head above water, you'd be well taken care of.

Welp.

Now don't get it twisted. I have always been a SAG-AFTRA apologist. I acknowledge its shortcomings, I understand the arguments against it, but I have been a member since I was nine and I personally don't want to see a version of this industry in which it does not exist.

Okay, Audiobooks specifically. Professional audiobook work is mostly union now and we have worked *very* hard the past decade to make this happen. And I have counted my lucky stars every day during this hell that I'm one of the few actors who can still work.

We are perhaps the last vestige of middle class working actors. And for us, the earnings gap is not vast. Even the most "famous" narrators are not making famous-actor-multiples more than folks just starting out. Especially now, with - thank you - established union minimums.

That said, we merry band of audiobook narrators have been paying our fair share (a not insignificant percentage of our paychecks for middle class people) and now, for some of us, these changes - when taken together - could result in premiums going up many hundreds percent.

The worst part is that the writing was on the wall and things do need an overhaul. But instead of steady, incremental, responsible change... we have this: multiple, wide-ranging shifts impacting literally everyone, dropped in the middle of a pandemic when no one can work.

So that's why people are freaking out.

Anyway

And if you're going to reply to this with any version of "see?? f unions" just don't; you're wrong. Or if you want to point out that maybe insurance shouldn't be tied to employment, yeah, welcome to the resistance. This is just for context.

And now I gotta go record. Mama needs an annual no co-pay in-network well-woman exam.