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SAG members are receiving this unofficial alert about the AMPTP negotiations:
THIS IS AN ALERT TO ALL SCREEN ACTORS GUILD MEMBERS
It is imperative to your well being that you read the TV/THEATRICAL NEGOTIATING UPDATE that was recently mailed to you by Screen Actors Guild and check the box showing support for Doug Allen, Alan Rosenberg and the Negotiating Committee, giving them the authority and ability to go in and negotiate a better deal for you.
We, the membership, need to understand the full impact and ramification of demands being made by the AMPTP and, in particular, the two issues listed below.
Thousand of members will be denied health coverage, pension benefits and residuals.
Free Streaming/Move Over
Streaming network television shows on the internet. There are very important elements of streaming that should be understood.The AMPTP demands:
· 17 days free streaming for current shows
· 24 days free streaming for new shows, followed by:
· Two consecutive 6-month ‘spurts’ for a payment of 3% of Total Applicable Minimum
· Guest star $85.00
· Day Player $22.77
Why is this a problem? It will not be supplemental income, but replacement income. As free streaming depletes the value of reruns, the first and second rerun residuals will be lost.
· Guest Star “top-of-show” (approximately $6,500), loses 60% of income
1st rerun residual $3,290 – lost
2nd rerun residual $3,290 – lost
· Day Player, scale (approximately $759), loses two-thirds of income
1st rerun residual $759 – lost
2nd rerun residual $759 – lost
In aggregate this represents a potential of 100-200 million dollars.
This lost income will have a profound impact on individual members’ Pension & Health Plans.Day Player:
· Currently needs about nine days work with 1st and 2nd rerun residuals.
· Without rerun residuals, will need about 27 days work, an almost impossible number of days to reachGuest Star:
· Currently needs about two guest roles with 1st and 2nd rerun residuals
· Without rerun residuals will need over 3 guest starring roles to qualify
Thousands of members that now qualify will find themselves without health coverage, pension benefits and residuals, turning our union into an elitist union representing only those temporarily the most successful.Clips:
· Producers may use clips for promotional purposes without consent or payment
· For any other purpose, consent is required and negotiable… but cannot be negotiated at time of original employment
This preserves the principle that your work can only be used in and for the film on which you are engaged, allowing you and your heirs to retain control of your name, voice and likeness.
AS A CONDITION OF EMPLOYMENT, in order to build a new industry based on clips, the AMPTP is demanding:
· we give up consent and negotiation;
· allow them to mix and mash clips: “mashing” – putting together 2 or more clips from different sources, creating a new product. we will have no control over how clips are mixed or mashed, leaving the door open for a total perversion of our creative work.
• For a payment of:
· under 2 minutes – $25.00
· under 4 minutes – $75.00
· over 4 minutes – $22.77You need to clearly understand that you will be denied employment if you do not accept these nominal payments and give up your right of consent.
It is critical that you be informed and weigh in on these two issues and the others outlined in the TV/Theatrical Negotiating Update. Our membership, the public and members of the industry at large should understand we are fighting for the basic bread and butter issues of pension benefits, health coverage, the protection of our work and the opportunity to make a living in our chosen careers.
This should be considered supplemental to the TV/Theatrical Negotiating Update which you have just received from the Guild.Fraternally
Ed Asner
Tom Bower
David Clennon
Rob Schneider
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Remember, in CITIZEN KANE, that determined but slow and rhythmic clapping that Kane (Orson Welles) does after his mistress sings opera like shit? CLAP….CLAP….CLAP….CLAP….CLAP….CLAP….CLAP….CLAP….CLAP
Hey, if losing all that income is good enough for the DGA, WGA and AFTRA, it oughtta be good enough for us, too.
ANY member of SAG who thinks for a New York nano-second that this proposed contract is acceptable in ANY part deserves to die like the dog the producers will treat him as. The time is upon us to get not a fair deal,but a GOOD deal.Since the producers want to insult us before they kill us we should shut down the industry til it dies.It is the only honorable course of action.
If you mogul types keep going like this, you’re not going to be able to find anyone qualified to work on your shows. You get what you pay for in the end. If you want your audience to keep eroding, keep treating the talent like crap and you’re going to find out what kind of production you’ll be forced to throw together for cheap five years from now… a badly acted unwatchable mess full of crappy non-union (and AFTRA) actors who couldn’t give two figs if they deliver a network quality performance for you…. unless you have no one in the cast over 25.
To survive, you’ll have to start doing what the game industry does – chewing them up and spitting them out before they’re old enough to know that dreams only take you so far and eventually you want to be paid fairly for your work.
I already know several people who turn on their heels and leave a set when they’re presented with a low-end AFTRA contract. You can literally make more waiting on tables in the same amount of time on some of these contracts (especially with no residuals). At this rate, no one will be left trying to make a living acting. To get anyone decent, you’ll have to pay them real money – probably much more than what SAG wants now.
Once you really start exploiting new media, if you think the actors are going to continue working this way long-term just because AFTRA signed off on it, you’re fooling yourselves. Working performers will push AFTRA out of existence if they keep undercutting SAG… and then we’ll strike for a fucking year if that’s what it takes for you to stop being so mind numbingly greedy.
Dear Graham,
Perhaps you’ve done well investing or maybe you’re one of the mid-level actors I’ve heard about recently, who has a second job (I don’t know any myself), but the finish you want to fight to is a very long way off.
The slow down in production that has occurred in the past several months has hit many of us who try to make a living in this business very hard. When I read my sides for the few auditions I still get, my heart sinks every time I come across a juicy role. Why? Because I know I’m going to get ‘the call’. That’s the call that tells me my audition has been cancelled, because they’ve made an offer to a name. So now I deal with scraps. That’s life these days.
But what is happening to me, is not happening to Sumner Redstone, Rupert Murdock or Robert Iger. Since the the TV/Theatrical bottom line on their spreadsheets is so small by comparison to their entire holdings, you can be sure the current dip in profits from the slowdown has barely crossed their desk.
Yes, the studios may be hurting, but the parent congloms have very deep pockets. So to recommend that we hunker down for the long haul and ‘shut down the industry til it dies’ seems to me a tad ambitious and maybe even bit foolhardy. I have no desire to leave things on the table that we might get with a little more negotiating, but we’re not negotiating. We’ve stalled.
The leverage that we might have had with AFTRA by our side was frittered away by the current leadership, who were bent on power in the boardroom rather than clout at the negotiating table.
So what do we do? We make the best of a bad situation. We bite the bullet, get what we can (if we still can) and live to fight another day. BUT, we make sure that when that ‘other day’ comes, we are a stronger more powerful union that covers everyone who steps in front of a camera. That means merger.
The writing is on the wall and the current leadership is the unwitting author.
That said, I’ve always enjoyed your performances and I respect your forthright statements on this issue, but if we follow your suggestion, I would ask that you find me in a few years when the strike is over and let me know, because I’ll probably be running ‘tryouts’ for some neighborhood high school play far from LA where the living is cheaper and won’t have heard the good news.
tom ligon
I have no idea what you are talking about you. you are a bizarre, troubled man. get help.
well, we’ll all see soon enough. it will, of course, be anti-climactic, and when, as I expect, u4s is bitch-slapped back into irrelevancy by the membership, sag will still be staring at the enemy across the trenches, the amptp, after spending months putting out a fire started by whackos like tom ligon on their own side of the line.
it’s like “we’re off to war!” but first we have to chase down uncle morty, who’s gotten out of the house and is running down main street in his underwear, and get him back on his meds.
what a useless waste of time, and distraction from the matter at hand.
have you seen u4s’s video on their web-site? wow. there’s ned – the republican – vaughn (I’m sorry but he looks like an evangelical republican lobbyist) saying, “unite for strength.” then, a series of other u4s talking heads, increasingly quick cuts: “unite.” “unite!” “unite for strength.” “for strength. “for strength!” “strength.” “unite for strength!”
content free and like some white boy rap for a fundamentalist mormon cult. it’s just… wow.
mf’s website finally cuts to the chase. “run these guys off, then, send out a referendum” – “sag” or “aftra?” – that will come back (conservatively) 85% “sag,” then, hop on over to roberta reardon’s office and tell her “you’re out of the business of repping actors. we will help you financially transition into a union that reps broadcasters and recording artists, if you want our help, but, you’re done. this is a vote of no confidence by your own membership, and if you choose to ignore it, you will be in violation of your own union’s charter. you are your members, not the other way around, and your dual card holders are sick of you undercutting, lying, secretive, incompetent ways, your shitty sub-standard contracts, your willingness to sell actors cheap to increase your own jurisdiction and power, and your latest brazen attempt to divide actors, thereby giving the amptp exactly what they wanted: factional infighting while the pressing business at hand – standing united as one union – the fucking screen actors guild – against these corporate conglomerate reptiles and telling them we will not bow down to having our incomes cut in half without a fucking fight.”
C’mon….at least call this what it is: a Campaign Mailer, sent at the last minute to try and drum up votes for Doug, Alan, et al…
“As free streaming depletes the value of reruns, the first and second rerun residuals will be lost.”
This is a huge leap that defies common sense.
Reruns aren’t going away tomorrow, or even in three years. The TV networks and cable channels still have to fill their programming hours with product. Audiences still use television sets as the primary means of receiving this kind of entertainment.
This argument proves too much. If reruns on conventional television have lost all of their value, then it means that the first exhibition of these same programs on conventional television has also lost its value. Thus the entire economic model on which the SAG Television Agreement will have disappeared. Actors won’t have to worry about residuals; they’ll have to worry about why this kind of programming isn’t being shot in the first place.
It’s ridiculous to think that reruns are going to disappear overnight. It may be that they will lose value and that internet streaming will increase in value. One would expect the compensation to shift over time, because if reruns on conventional television don’t pay the freight then the skeins aren’t going to license them and the producers aren’t going to pay for them.
The alternative implied by this letter makes no sense. The letter implies that producers should essentially pay double what they’re paying now — once for rerunning on conventional TV, and once again for exhibition via online or other “new media” channels. But the audience hasn’t suddenly doubled. It’s about the same audience, and although the total numbers grow as the population grows, the audiences for specific programming have now fragmented.
What is needed, but no one has yet figured out, is a way to hang on to the concept of being paid once, even if the delivery mechanism moves. I don’t quarrel with that. But I think the Asner/Bower/Clennon/Schneider letter goes off on a hysterical extreme that does not contribute usefully to solving the problem.
LA VO
These draconian proposals needs serious consideration by my fellow BTL friends. If the AMPTP can think this scorched earth policy will work with the single most powerful union in Hollywood, guess what they have planned for the IATSE, the biggest rollover union ever? People, start saving your money. 2009 could get really ugly. Our lifestyles could change radically.
In all honesty, the “Producers”(?) have already killed this business with their hubris, skimming, thievery and graft. The Golden Goose is cooked! Just look at the numbers… Even Jack Warner would be shocked!
Re: “Shut the industry down till it dies”? Spoken like one of SAG’s many un- or underemployed members who are never seen on screen & should not have a vote and the right to be heard. They are already not working, resent and are jealous of the actors who are, and would rather see the whole industry destroyed rather than give up their pipedream and GET A JOB!
‘…shut down the industry til it dies,’ huh? And then what do you do…?
“Thousands of members that now qualify will find themselves without health coverage, pension benefits and residuals, turning our union into an elitist union representing only those temporarily the most successful”
Turning? it’s already an elitist union. unless you’re on the networks list you can’t get into TV, and independent film actors can never make enough to qualify for health coverage.
Almost all the actors i know who are making enough to qualify are in their early 20s and are successful because they started building their careers when they were twelve.
The unions and this industry are over saturated with actors.
Actors need to start producing. Start generating the work they need. A solid curriculum on production should be requisite in every BFA program/acting conservatory in the country.
“Producers”(?) — You mean, “Producers-at-law” — “Producers, Esq” — Remember, this is the same group of shiny suits that took the Lone Ranger’s mask away! Now, they’re about to take away everything that SAG has worked for all these years. If we fold, we’ll only have ourselves to blame! If you haven’t got the stomach for this fight, then you should tear up your card!
Graham is the perfect embodiment of the non-thinking, macho, irrational actor’s mentality who seem to think showbusiness exists as a charity to fund their creative pursuits. Someone selling services gets what the buyers feels their services are worth in the real world. But this is not the real world, is it. It’s the world of whining, pathological entitlement. Scary.
LA VO:
if an episode of a television show or movie is shown in a download-able fashion, and is supported by AD REVENUES,
actors deserve to be fairly compensated.
the amptp wants to pay us a pittance and run said show or movie in an
unlimited fashion for six months at a time.
there is a problem for SCREEN ACTORS that’s called overexposure.
if you spend most of your career in a voice over booth,
you wouldn’t have that problem, but it’s a concern that those of us who walk and talk on screen have as it can hamper future employment.
the clip issue is another example of the overexposure trap.
the studios want to have the ability to use our IMAGES from past performances and mash them up together in any way they want,
to create new frankenstein-like product that we will have no say about,
for which we will receive meager, non-negotiable compensation that actually decreases as usage goes up.
for actors who show their FACES this is a problem.
if one becomes associated with a specific show or product too
strongly, it can eliminate the possibility to be considered for new and different work.
and the amptp wants the right to do this without even properly paying the performer whose image and performance they will be exploiting in any way they see fit.
these are just two of the issues listed by
messers, asner, bower, clennon and schneider.
people who really read this e-mail will see that it is in no way hysterical,
but a sober, concise explanation of:
what crap the amptp is offering us,
what they intend to take away,
and what the acceptance of this horrid deal would mean for
middle-class actors. and that’s most of us.
these are the realities of this contract, the reasons rosenberg, allen and the negotiating team have not been able to recommend this deal to us and why we are now at this impasse.
to characterize this important piece of information as hysterical
is indicative of a go-along-to-get-along, head in the sand attitude
that is dangerous in it’s denial and complacency.
or perhaps it’s a cultural difference that led LA VO to make that statement.
if LA VO earns their money by volume of work, by doing
many, many sessions as opposed to the screen actor’s life of bursts of activity separated by spaces that need to be supported in part by residuals, then there is nothing in this deal that would be offensive to LA VO and so they would find it perfectly acceptable.
well, screen actors do not find it in any way acceptable.
Todd Wearing-thin:
(Quoting you)
“I have no desire to leave things on the table that we might get with a little more negotiating, but we’re not negotiating.”
“We’ve stalled.”
DEFINE: “a little more negotiating.”
Let’s say “Unite-for-Strength” wins six seats on the national Board and takes over control of the talks. How many minutes of “more negotiating” are you planning to do before you sign the surrender document? Remember, you don’t want to waste the AMPTP’s time!
You declare, “We’ve stalled.”
What do you mean, “We,” White Man?
S.A.G. is not the stalling party.
The AMPTP, as most observers know, has loudly announced its refusal to negotiate.
The AMPTP is WAITING (stalling) for “Unite-for-Strength” (“I’m-Tired-of-Stress”) to be elected, vindicating AFTRA and ending S.A.G.’s resistance.
If “I’m-Tired-of-Stress” wins control of the national Board, the AMPTP will rejoice. In a generous mood, they will sprinkle powdered sugar over the deal-turd, as a little reward for the S.A.G. “adult” members who voted to capitulate.
For extra credit, Todd, and Tom “CLAP” Ligon:
Address the issue of seriously shrinking residuals in our bullet-point analysis above:
“Free Streaming/Move Over.”
I have not received a first-rerun residual for an episode of “Boston Legal” I did last season. You can watch my episode, for free, on the network’s website.
The network gets a 17-day residual-free “window” for as much free streaming as the market will bear. If the network hasn’t totally exhausted the potential on-line viewership, they will pay me EIGHTY-FIVE DOLLARS for another six months of streaming.
Let’s see, $85 versus $3,200? Should I hold out for something closer to $3,200? Nah, I’m Tired-of-Stress, I’m gonna fold.
I’m grateful to Graham Beckel for having spoken out.
And, Todd Wearing-thin, I’m doubly grateful that Graham is less bombastic than you and I.
WawaLisa: YOUR assignment is to IMDb Graham Beckel. Then IMDb yourself. Compare and Contrast. Get back to us. (Oops, what if “WawaLisa” is really Sally Field? Or Forrest Gump?)
wawalisa
look him up on imdb. he’s not a non-working actor.
you are.
get your gear on miss lisa. or get out of the way.
LA VO guy:
“What is needed, but no one has yet figured out, is a way to hang on to the concept of being paid once”
you mean, no residuals?
that’s fucking brilliant.
“We bite the bullet, get what we can (if we still can) and live to fight another day.”
todd waring:
the reptile producers? are spitting up laughing at this u4s talking point. there IS no “fight another day.”
it’s TODAY. as handel said the other day in his filibuster, uh, interview with kim hedgepath, “precedents are like roach motels. they check in but they don’t check out.”
you might want to make that bullet a cyanide pellet.
Residuals need to be abolished across the board.
Actors deserve to be paid once for their time and effort, just like everyone else in this world.
Studios pay workers to create a product… and then are forced to continue to pay over and over again.
Why is it acceptable to hold this industry hostage with this extortion?
Producers should fight to kill residuals now!
Clennon wrote “And, Todd Wearing-thin, I’m doubly grateful that Graham is less bombastic than you and I.”
I am astonished that you think Graham saying we “should die like a dog”, is in anyway like Todd’s reasoned and calm response to the hysteria like approach of yourself and others on here.
We are allowed to express our opinions without being asked to ‘die’ if they differ from yours and your little name calling makes any rhetoric you say sound like a bitter seventh grader. You lost me as most of MF has, with shrillness.
The referendum is a great idea.
“Producers should fight to kill residuals now!”
brought to you by “TDF”
aka: “too dumb to fuck”
dear rocco p,
yes, in an open market people selling their services get what the buyers feel the services are worth. AN OPEN MARKET.
but when six or so COMPETITORS get together for the express purpose
of keeping labor and service costs down, that smacks of ….
COLLUSION,
and therefore the market is not truly open.
it’s not about whining pal, it’s about being fairly compensated when mega-corporations are reaping multi-millions because of our efforts.
they would love to make their product without us,
but right now, they can’t.