SAG Petitioners Clarify Their Position…

COMMENTS (31)

• So I sacrificed and saved and borrowed $2300 only to be told I shouldn’t have a vote on whether we have a strike? What’s the yardstick to measure how someone is affected? If I worked three days on SAG contracts in the past year, that’s not good enough? I wouldn’t be “affected”? I haven’t received this petition, so I don’t know.

  What are people afraid of? I don’t get it.

  Comment by New SAG actor — Thursday February 14, 2008 @ 12:40pm PST  Reply to this post

• Dear BTL Mom,

  You said, “Even if the board amended the constitution to allow for qualified voting on contracts the strike article can not be amended without 75% approval of the entire membership.”

  Affected member voting exists in the constitution already. It’s not a matter of amending the constitution; it’s a matter of fully implementing the first line of Article XI.

  The board already applies a de facto form of affected member voting on the ‘interactive’ agreements by sending it out for ratification to only those who’ve worked the contract. Anyone can come in and request a ballot, but the reality is that the policy exists already.

  Comment by todd waring — Thursday February 14, 2008 @ 2:33pm PST  Reply to this post

• I think that this petition comes from the idea that these 900 SAG members have no faith in Rosenberg and his NEG COMM. He’s hellbent to go on strike. Just look at his and Bateman’s statements during the WGA strike. Without the vanity cards he may not get an overwhelming strike vote. It will make the guild look weak and full of rhetoric.
  The gains that the WGA made are good, I don’t think SAG can get a much better deal with or without a strike.

  Comment by just a thought — Thursday February 14, 2008 @ 3:13pm PST  Reply to this post

• Peter,

  First of all, I appreciate your taking the time to read my comment and respond. Second, congratulations on your new WGA contract. You guys really showed what can be achieved by solidarity and a strong belief in the value of your work.

  But if the WGA version of affected member voting is ‘exactly what you’re asking for’, then you, or Ned, or somebody needs to clarify that. There’s a huge difference, in my mind, between requiring a member to have worked under a SAG contract once in the last seven years, and requiring them to have earned $7,500 in every one of those years, which is what, on the surface, Ned’s petition appears to call for.

  I also think that someone needs to reconcile the argument that we should exclude young members just getting started because they don’t have enough experience to vote correctly with the accompanying argument that we should exclude veteran “vanity card” actors who have all the experience in the world. And to explain why now is the right time to undertake a political restructuring of SAG.

  But I guess what it comes down to most for me, Peter, is that we just don’t know who a contract is going to affect. If you’d have asked me in 1996 whether I thought I would be affected by the cable and home video provisions of the SAG theatrical contract, I’d probably have said no. And under the terms of Ned’s petition, I’d have been barred from voting, having only made $4,986 on Swingers, and less than that on The Low Life, the year before. But if you’d asked me again in 1999 after Office Space hit cable and DVD, I’d have to say, you know what, I kinda was. I was affected a great deal.

  Twenty-some years ago, when SAG accepted a catastrophically bad deal on what was then a New Media, I suspect part of the reason was that the majority of the “working” membership felt that those particular provisions didn’t affect them. That “real” actors made their money in box offices and on network television, and that this new stuff and the actors who needed the opportunities it provided weren’t worth protecting. That decision haunts us to this day.

  Ultimately, Peter, you, Ned and I want the same thing. We want the AMPTP to give us a strong contract. We want to collectively make wise, informed and savvy decisions about how to get there from here. We’re just starting that process. But I do think we have to be in it together, and I don’t think there’s anything Pollyanna-ish about that, unless you’re referring to the picture Nikki posted, in which case I gotta give you that one.

  All the best,
  Ron

  Comment by Ron Livingston — Thursday February 14, 2008 @ 4:19pm PST  Reply to this post

• Ned, Chad etc.

  Now is not the time to be putting divisive petitions out to the membership. There is no way the current board is going to enact qualified voting before the next contract and they would catch hell from the rank and file if they did. You still can’t use qualified voting to get around Article XII’s guidelines and you can’t change article XII without a vote of the entire membership.

  My dearest hope is that the strike authorization is not needed at all to get a fair contract.

  If you want to push for qualified voting in the future, use the established procedures for a guild referendum after we have a theatrical contract. Your proposal at this time does nothing polarize the membership one way or the other and draws focus away from the goal of securing a fair contract.

  Since I joined the guild I’ve watched the agent franchise agreements fall apart, and the politics of guild elections become a two party system among other debacles. The AMPTP will pounce on every sign of weakness they see from the guild to dilute their offers in the next contract.

  Comment by BTL Mom — Thursday February 14, 2008 @ 5:21pm PST  Reply to this post

• Wow.

  What a bunch of tools. Not a good time to push this agenda. Last year would have been great, Mr. Vaughn.

  I’m a working actor, have been for years. Quite comfortably above any minimum that would be established, but I agree. This goes through, I go fi-core.

  Disgusting.

  Comment by Working actor — Thursday February 14, 2008 @ 10:02pm PST  Reply to this post