Woods said that if the company paid the guild’s minimum rates for child and adult actors it would add 40 percent to the cost of producing the live-action shows, which in some cases would prevent them from turning a profit. “We’d love to come to an agreement with SAG, but not at the expense of turning over the keys to them,” he said.

But Masur said that explanation was ridiculous. He said Saban earned more than $300 million on “Power Rangers” alone in 1996 and that other children’s programmers, such as Warner Bros. and Disney, manage to earn a profit while paying SAG rates. The guild president said performers on Saban productions are paid a small fraction of the standard rate for the entertainment industry, and often do not receive benefits such as pension, health and residual income from rebroadcasts. He said that actors with speaking parts in Saban productions earn $200 a day, instead of the $559 that SAG has established as the industry minimum.

Same fight, a different day (the article’s from January 1998). They were making $300M dollars a year, but “couldn’t” pay SAG minimums of $559 a day for speaking actors.

ACTORS GUILD FACES OFF AGAINST ‘POWER RANGERS’