Getting into and maintaining SAG membership is very time consuming and expensive.
You could work in the industry for years and never get in. Others get lucky and get in within a few months. A lot of people are SAG Eligible but can't afford the initial fees to get in.
It's not like a standard union where you show up to work every day for months and you are in. Non-union basically do the exact same thing as union folk, but get paid less per hour. In contrast, there is a budget limit to how many SAG workers can be on set, so while your hourly is higher, the quantity of work you have is much lower.
Most SAG members are background extras, who don't earn very much money, and can't work more if they wanted to.
Definitely not the union you'd want to emulate. Film and TV actors are all temporary workers.
Well, the good thing about unions, is they're democratically organized. So, tech workers should look at what works in SAG (performance based pay w/reasonable floors, great benefits), emulate that, and set aside the problems/barriers you describe.
And actually tech workers have a lot of similarities to those in entertainment (both front and back of house) larger numbers of nerodiverse members than the population at large for example.
The Biggest tech union on the UK just merged with BECTU (the eqvielent of IATSE)
