That Pesky Bargaining Pattern

From the Times several days back:

... The Directors Guild of America has approved a new contract that will allow its more than 16,000 members to take a bigger slice of a growing pie by boosting residuals while also increasing wages. ...

If three years of reuse of original content would yield less than $15,000 in residuals for a DGA member under the current contract, the amount would more than triple to $50,000 under the new contract, according to the guild.

The new contract also increases residuals for feature-length streaming movies and establishes for the first time residuals for DGA members whose content streams overseas. ...

The new contract will boost wages, with an increase of 2.5% in the first year of the agreement and 3% in the second and third years of the agreement. The deal also will increase employer contributions to the guild’s pension plan. ...

So what seems to be unspooling here?

Looks like the usual 3%/3%/3% happened, except the DGA took a half percent from year one and plunked it into its pension and health plans (and yeah, obviously I'm making an educated guess).

The way negotiations usually work, there's a certain amount of money on the table and the union/guild decides where it wants the moolah to go. Betting that's what happened at this negotiation.

Judging from the information that's been released, higher residuals are triggered by budget thresholds being hit. Live action thresholds. How this part of the DGA contract will impact the Animation Guild is hard to say, since the Guild doesn't receive DGA-style residuals. But live-action budget levels did nothing for animators in the last negotiations, since animation budgets are in a different universe.

This contract and others will impact the Animation Guild's next agreement come 2018.