Recently I discovered that I had not been SAG/AFTRA for quite some time and had to renew my membership. I found this out because I booked a job in November (woohoo!) and got a letter from SAG saying that they were going to excuse my lack of a membership this one time, but if I worked after that, it would be at my own expense. This came to me as a surprise until I remembered that a few years ago I had decided to take a break from acting while I finished school, because education is very important to me, and it was the right choice at the time. So I received this letter, which said that my dues would be upwards of $3,000 to make up for the time that I had not been paying them. I was in complete shock because firstly, that is a lot of money, and secondly, I had no idea that you had to make up for past dues if you had not been active in the industry. This was not made apparent to me at the time.
I immediately contacted SAG/AFTRA to see what I could do about this outrageous cost because it was not something I was willing to pay off willy-nilly, and ended up having to go through an entire process of writing a letter to the RORC (Reinstatement Observation Review Committee) with a down payment, so that I would still be able to work in the industry as a union actress while they reviewed my situation and decided whether or not $3,000 was the correct fee to be applying to my case. This was a long process and took about two months to have completed. It was a lot of phone calls, waiting on hold, going back and forth over emails, and finally faxing in the forms.
All in all, this is a PSA about SAG/AFTRA. It is very important to be a member of the union if you are currently pursuing acting and planning on working on any projects (which you should be!), they are the safest way to ensure that you are correctly remunerated for the work that you do, and probably one of the more sane things in the acting world. Something to know about is that SAG/AFTRA does not assume that because you have not been working, you are not able to pay your rates, even if you haven’t been working for years.
If you decide to take a break from acting for whatever reason, it is very important that you make sure SAG/AFTRA knows this and puts your account on hold. It will save you a lot of money and time in the future, where you will lose none of your SAG/AFTRA benefits upon rejoining, and will only need to pay the nominal fee that you would have had to be paying regardless.