SAG-AFTRA has filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board to represent intimacy coordinators in bargaining with the major studios.
The move is the latest step in a five-year effort by the union to professionalize the role of intimacy coordinators, who act as liaisons between performers and the production during the filming of sex scenes.
Getting NLRB recognition would allow SAG-AFTRA to bargain for minimum pay and working conditions.
“We have no protections,” said Marci Liroff, who has worked as an intimacy coordinator in film and TV. “And we have no heath insurance. We have no pension.”
HBO requires intimacy coordinators for filming sex scenes, but there is no such requirement industrywide. The 2023 SAG-AFTRA contract includes a provision requiring producers to use “best efforts” to hire an IC for scenes involving nudity or sex acts. The provision also says that if a performer requests an IC, the producer must consider the request in “good faith” and not retaliate.
The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents the studios in bargaining, has not offered to voluntarily recognize intimacy coordinators. Once the petition is submitted to the NLRB, the potential bargaining unit must hold a vote to approve SAG-AFTRA representation.
In a statement, SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher said that intimacy coordinators create a safety net for performers in vulnerable situations.
“Shifting the power imbalance that has been ingrained over a century is challenging but important work,” she said. “Work that can be done even more effectively with the backing of a union. Intimacy coordinators have our backs on set and now it’s our turn to have theirs.”
The union issued guidelines for intimacy coordinators in 2020. It established an accreditation program and an official registry in 2021, which now lists about 70 members in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Australia, and elsewhere. The following year, SAG-AFTRA invited intimacy coordinators to join the union.
Source Agencies
