SAG-AFTRA Political Candidate Backs Plan to Sue His Personal Union Over Its COVID-19 Work Settlement

SAG-AFTRA secretary-treasurer candidate Pete Antico has messaged union members in an try to drum up plaintiffs in a possible lawsuit towards the labor group.

Antico, who’s aligned with an impartial slate of candidates that’s difficult Fran Drescher’s Unity ticket, on Thursday despatched union members an election marketing campaign message informing them of potential pending litigation towards SAG-AFTRA. “Sag-Aftra union members throughout the nation discriminated towards and harmed by Sag-Aftra’s Return to Work Settlement are actually taking issues into their very own arms and are submitting a lawsuit towards the union to cease the insanity,” Antico wrote within the message. The e-mail exhorted members to learn a letter from Safety of the Academic Rights of Youngsters (PERK), a 501(c)3 nonprofit that supported Normal Hospital star Ingo Rademacher’s COVID-19 vaccine lawsuit towards ABC. (An L.A. Superior Court docket Choose dominated on behalf of ABC within the go well with in June.) PERK is “combating on behalf of union members who need to protect medical freedom, physique autonomy & freedom of selection, an inalienable Human Proper,” Antico wrote.

The PERK letter alleged that the trade’s Return to Work Settlement, a pact agreed to by Hollywood unions and the Alliance of Movement Image and Tv Producers that set well being and security necessities through the COVID-19 pandemic, “subjected our members to invasive testing, masking, being banned from work and in some instances being successfully blacklisted.” The letter additional alleges that this yr, SAG-AFTRA performers “are once more confronted with compelled masking, extra experimental booster photographs and different scientifically unsupported protocols.” After regulating pandemic-era well being and security on units for round three years, the Return to Work Settlement formally expired on Might 12. Even so, the PERK letter states, “many SAG-AFTRA members are nonetheless topic to COVID protocols and mandates in an effort to both audition, be forged, or proceed engaged on a manufacturing already in contract.”

The letter requests donations to assist this marketing campaign and exhorts members who consider they’ve been “discriminated towards to your sincerely held beliefs or private well being causes” to succeed in out to the group and fill out a survey.

It’s unclear whether or not there are presently another members concerned within the effort. PERK’s web site lists a number of different authorized endeavors, which embody a number of vaccine-related issues in addition to one towards a faculty district in suburban L.A. over its sex-ed curriculum.

The Hollywood Reporter has reached out to SAG-AFTRA for remark.

Antico, a former SAG-AFTRA president candidate, is operating alongside SAG-AFTRA president hopeful Maya Gilbert-Dunbar this yr. Gilbert-Dunbar, whose husband Rockmond Dunbar sued Disney and twentieth Tv in 2022 after dismissing him from 911 over his refusal to get a COVID-19 vaccine, said in an interview in August that her husband’s expertise helped inform her political marketing campaign. She can also be involved in regards to the appropriation of union dues and has promised to finish the present SAG-AFTRA strike with the assistance of mediators and probably nationwide and California politicians. Gilbert-Dunbar’s and Antico’s slate additionally contains Nationwide Board candidates reminiscent of Rob Schneider (Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo), Elliott Gould (Ocean’s Eleven), Dr. Drew (Superstar Rehab) and Diane Ladd (Chinatown). 

In the meantime, Fran Drescher’s Unity ticket has aligned two political factions inside the union which can be normally vehemently at odds, the teams Unite for Power and Membership First. The Unity slate is operating Drescher for union president and incumbent Joely Fisher as secretary-treasurer, whereas candidates for the union’s Nationwide and L.A. Native boards embody Sean Astin (The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring), Sheryl Lee Ralph (Abbott Elementary) and Frances Fisher (Titanic).

Election outcomes are set to be tabulated on Friday.