Creators need standards before they need a union

Ask a hundred creators what a fair brand deal looks like and you'll get a hundred answers. That, more than any platform or any brand, is the creator economy's weakest point. You can't bargain collectively for terms nobody has agreed on.

The case for organising creators has never looked stronger. Brand budgets keep growing, platforms keep rewriting their terms, and AI tools can now copy a face and a voice. Hollywood's biggest union has noticed.

SAG-AFTRA's national board unanimously approved a new committee for influencers and digital creators, chaired by travel and lifestyle creator Patrick Janelle. Inside Radio reported that the union wants to go beyond its 2021 influencer agreement, which covers only branded content, to find a way to cover original, non-branded work on YouTube and TikTok. Thousands of creators have already worked under the agreement and its waiver, though the union doesn't know how many of its own members are influencers.

We support that effort. But we'll argue against the obvious next step. The most urgent need isn't a union for creators. It's standards: shared, public, default contract terms any creator can point to, whether or not they ever join anything.

Who would the union represent?

Look at the workforce. CreatorIQ's State of Creators 2026 survey of 5,055 creators found that 67% earn under $10,000 a year from content. Only about 4% clear $100,000, and roughly six in ten say content isn't their main source of income.

Collective bargaining works best with a clear employer, a defined workforce and members whose livelihoods depend on the work. Creators often have none of those. Their "employer" might be a brand, an agency, a platform, an affiliate programme or their own audience, sometimes all in the same week. Most are part-time. A model built for performers on studio productions doesn't map neatly onto a nurse with 40,000 followers who does two sponsored posts a month.

That doesn't mean unions have no role. For working professionals doing branded work for big advertisers, SAG-AFTRA's agreement offers real benefits. But it reaches the top of the pyramid, and the pyramid is very wide.

What standards would fix now

The disputes creators actually face are depressingly familiar: late payment, unlimited usage rights buried in contracts, vague exclusivity and, increasingly, AI. These are standards problems more than bargaining problems. They recur because each creator negotiates alone, usually against a brand or agency that has signed hundreds of similar contracts and knows exactly which clauses matter.

A credible, industry-backed standard could cover:

• Payment terms. A default payment window that brands and agencies sign up to publicly.
• Usage rights. Clear defaults for duration, paid amplification and whitelisting, each priced separately.
• AI and likeness. No synthetic versions of a creator's face or voice without explicit, paid consent. The legal ground is shifting. New York's synthetic performer law, in force since June, requires ads to disclose AI-generated performers, with civil penalties of $1,000 for a first violation and $5,000 after that. The EU AI Act's labelling rules took effect in August, according to Lewis Silkin. But New York's law exempts audio-only ads, so voice work needs contractual protection on top.
• Creative friction. In CreatorIQ's survey, 43% of creators reported tension between what their audience wants and what brands ask for, rising to more than half of those with 500,000+ Instagram followers. Clear approval and revision limits would reduce it. CreatorIQ's own Jennifer Cho has argued that brands do better when they are less prescriptive.

Standards spread through adoption, not membership. A nano-creator can attach a published standard to a negotiation tomorrow. A brand can advertise that it complies. Agencies can compete on it. Nobody needs to hold an election or pay dues. And because a standard is public, it gives brands that behave well something they rarely get: credit for it.

Who should write it? Not a single platform, which would write terms that suit itself. Not a single agency or software vendor either. The most credible version would come from a coalition: creators across income levels, the managers who negotiate for them, brands willing to commit publicly, and the union, which already has experience writing terms for branded work. SAG-AFTRA's influencer agreement could serve as one input, not the whole answer.

The standard would also need to be modest at first. A short document covering payment, usage, AI and revisions, written in plain language, is more useful than a hundred-page code nobody reads. It can grow as adoption grows.

Nor would standards compete with the union. They would feed it. Every brand that signs up and then breaks its word creates a documented grievance. Every creator who learns what fair terms look like becomes a better-informed potential member. A union organising a workforce that already shares a definition of a fair deal starts from a far stronger position than one trying to build that definition and the membership at the same time.

And there is a group standards reach that a union may never reach: the two-thirds of creators earning under $10,000. They're unlikely to pay dues or sign up for representation. They can still copy a link into an email.

The strongest counterargument

The best case against us comes from labour history. Voluntary standards without enforcement are just suggestions. Brands will sign the pledge and ignore it when budgets tighten. Only collective power, backed by the ability to refuse work, actually moves terms.

Creators have shown they have some of that power. Inside Radio reports that creators backed striking SAG-AFTRA members in 2023 by turning down work from struck companies. That solidarity was real, and it mattered.

We take the point seriously. Standards without teeth do fail. But teeth need a jaw to attach to, and right now the creator workforce lacks even a shared definition of a fair deal. Standards create that definition. They tell creators what to ask for, make violations visible, and give a future union something concrete to bargain over.

Write the rulebook first. Then the union has something worth fighting for.