01
Choose your agreement
The ladder of SAG-AFTRA agreements, what actually determines which rung you are on, and the tier jump that quietly rewrites your budget.
Free field guide for producers
Most SAG-AFTRA money is won or lost before you cast.
The agreement decision that sets your labor budget and how to hold the line once the cameras roll. A producer's field guide, prepared by the Revolution Labor Relations team.
Prevent penalties. Protect the production.
Hiring union performers is not the hard part.
Producers do it every day. What catches productions out is narrower, and it happens earlier: the agreement you sign, and whether your budget can still live inside it by the time you are shooting.
Pick the right agreement and the rest is process. Pick the wrong one, or drift past the threshold you budgeted against, and you inherit a different rate structure, different paperwork, and a set of costs nobody funded. That correction is almost always more expensive than the preparation would have been.
So this guide is not a summary of the rulebook. It is built around the decisions that move money, in the order you will actually face them: what agreement fits, what it truly costs, how to become a signatory without losing weeks, how to keep the paperwork clean during production, how to cast nonunion talent the legitimate way, and what to do on the day an audit or a grievance shows up.
A note on numbers
You will notice we do not print rate tables or budget ceilings here. Scale, fringe contributions, and the budget thresholds attached to each agreement are renegotiated, and they move. A number that is right this quarter can be wrong by the time you are prepping. Where a figure matters to your plan, ask us for the current one and we will give it to you against your specific agreement, free of charge.
What's inside
Six decisions, in the order they hit you.
02
Build a budget that holds
Every line that sits on top of scale, from fringes and agency commission to holds, forced calls, bonds, and reserves.
03
Become a signatory
The application path, the documents to have ready, the lead time to protect, and what to do when you need a signatory entity you do not have.
04
Keep Exhibit G clean
The daily performer timecard, decoded column by column, plus the entries that trigger money.
05
Cast nonunion, legitimately
How the Taft-Hartley process works, what it triggers for the performer, and the cost assumption producers get wrong.
06
When something goes wrong
Audits, claims, and grievances. What the first seventy-two (72) hours should look like, and why documentation decides the outcome.
A pre-production labor checklist you can take straight into your next production meeting.
Why ours is different
Written by the team that gets the call when it goes wrong.
Every guide to hiring union talent stops at the paperwork. In practice, the paperwork is not where producers need the most help. It is the day an audit notice, a claim, or a grievance lands, and the production still has to shoot tomorrow.
Revolution's Labor Relations team is led by Joe Barrera, EVP, Labor Relations, who brings more than twenty five (25) years across major studios and leading entertainment payroll companies. Joe has guided high profile productions through complex grievances, union audits, labor claims, and arbitration proceedings, consistently delivering meaningful cost containment and risk mitigation.
This guide is what he tells producers before they cast.
Ask us anything, any time. Current fringe rates. Whether a day should be recorded as hold. Which agreement fits a project at your budget level. Whether a scope change has moved your tier. No meter running.
Signatory access when you need it. Through our partnership with Premiere Production Services, an IATSE/Teamsters signatory entity, with compliance, documentation, remittances, and risk management coordinated rather than scattered.
One platform, not five vendors. Entertainment payroll, production accounting, onboarding, production management, and residuals in one place, so your compliance record and your payroll record are the same record.
Instant answers at 2am. Our free Labor Relations Advisor answers questions directly from the agreements, with the source cited, whenever you need it. When it does not know, it hands you to a human who does.
Labor Relations Advisor
Got a question the guide does not cover?
Ask the Revolution Labor Relations Advisor. It answers from the agreements themselves and cites its source, so you can check the work. And when it does not know, it hands you to someone who does.
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Let's talk production.
If you are casting union performers in the next few months, the cheapest hour you will spend on this production is the one where we look at your budget and tell you which agreement fits.