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The AMPTP today published its June 30, 2008 Final Offer to SAG here, along with a summary of key terms:
“The AMPTP encourages all concerned members of the Hollywood community to study the details of the Final Offer and evaluate whether the economic and new media gains in the Final Offer — which is consistent with the six other major labor agreements made during 2008 – justifies a debilitating strike in the middle of a historic national economic crisis.”
But how are these “New Media gains” if they’re not paid out? (Just ask the WGA…) If you want to read SAG’s analysis of the June 30th AMPTP offer, it’s here.
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Can’t wait to hear the SAG boo birds weigh in on this. Though good for the AMPTP for being transparent. If SAG truly wants its membership to educate themselves then all 120,000 members should be pouring over this offer and all 120,000 should vote on the strike authorization – one way or the other.
Seems to me that SAG is hoping for an even lower turn out for their vote then the last time. They announced an education effort on Thanksgiving eve, when no one was paying attention and there still has been no announcement of a voting date or the process that will be followed. Rumblings are that the voting will take place during the holidays.
Really? During the holidays?
Even SAG’s negotiators understand that many of these ballots are going to go to agents’ offices and that the act of getting the ballots from agents to working actors over the holidays will itself be difficult…let alone giving the actors enough time to vote.
Stop the nonsense. Be happy that you’re getting increases at a time that many in the industry are getting pink slips.
A quick going over of the deal summary and a comparison to AFTRA’s deal summary shows me that not one improvement upon the inadequate AFTRA deal was offered to SAG.
I’m going to delve more deeply into the 40+ pages of the full offer tonight and see what else may be lurking in this ‘groundbreaking’ deal for SAG but as I’m fond of saying, to bury someone or something, first you have to break ground
AMPTP: The Final Solution
No thanks. I saw the way the last Final Solution went.
I also saw the NY Times article July 12, 2007 quoting the studio heads as they bragged about doing away with all residuals in the 2008 contracts.
My UNION will get my yes vote in hopes the AMPTP will, for the first time, actually negotiate. I hope the AMPTP comes to their senses and offer us a contract we can sign so they don’t force a work stoppage.
It amazes me that some middle class people working their asses off continue to watch how these CEOs line their pockets with multi-million dollar salaries, dig in the cash register for multi-million dollar year end bonuses and crash our economy. Then the CEOs cry how the working man is at fault. So they beg for what will amount to tax increases on the little guy to give them hundreds of BILLIONS of dollars to solve the problem the CEOs created–still keeping all they have amassed in their golden parachutes by what amounts to stealing– to save America from this “unforeseen” economic crash.
For those who are the middle class: wake up! It’s not the Screen Actors Guild or the middle class who is at fault. The CEOs are working to take all they can from you for their own salaries and bonuses.
It’s happening so prominently in today’s headlines and still you turn on your neighbor in the Screen Actors Guild and blam him or her for being greedy or out of touch?
Please my friends, fight the real enemy. We are all in this together. We live next to you. And if they do it to us they will do it to you.
The Richens running the AMPTP love to see you lash out at SAG for trying to undermine mom and pop and other workers. But you simply must not fall for their tricks.
I think you are and we all are too smart to fall for these $700 billion trick, aren’t we?
Vote YES on the strike ballot. You will see the power the common man has when we come together for collective bargaining. We’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take you’re $700 Billion bills to float your yachts.
VOTE YES so your children’s world will offer options besides being servants at the mansions of these CEOs who have wrecked every company for their own gain.
Workin’ Stiff forgot to mention the ROLLBACKS that the wonderful AMPTP are trying to shove down the actor’s throats. Last time I checked, rollbacks suck, and are nothing to be happy about!
Happy Holidays!
WS:
I’d like to keep an open mind, so I opened the AMPTP site expecting to see what the AMPTP “final offer” is. Unfortunately, that’s not what’s there. What is there, on the other hand, is a specific-free press release of AMPTP puffing up how “good” the offer is, because they (the adversary) say so.
This is as persuasive to me, personally, as somebody with a track record of being dishonest and wating to screw me telling me I need to date their cousin. But in doing this he ignores giving me any specifics I could possibly evaluate for myself. Instead, it consists of “she’s great, fantastic, and never mind I have repeatedly lied to anybody who will listen, you should trust me on this for the sole fact that I say so.” I know and need to see the specifics and not trust the interpretation of my adversary as to what the actual facts are.
With due respect, this couldn’t be less “transparent.” The only thing to me that’s “transparent” about it is that AMPTP fears that the membership, given the specific facts of an offer, would be absolutely opposed to it.
“Pouring over” an AMPTP press release called (though I don’t know why) an “offer” is no more helpful to me than a SAG educational campaign bereft of specific sticking points.
AMPTP knows all too well the attempted AFTRA merger attempt was an absolute non-starter because of the specifics, with the devil hiding in the details.
I vote on specific details of a proposal, disregarding all puffery on both sides.
One more press release of AMPTP talking points, dressed up on as offer for review by members just tell me damn well they know if they give us facts of the offer, even the softies will have grave problems with it.
I, as you, am all for SAG members getting educated on the actual offer, and the specifics of what concessions they allege to have made.
Another AMPTP creative-accounting spin fest does not substute putting up what the actual offer is. One can evaluate specific offers: Not spin. As Nikki points out, even if they were specific, they’ve already proven themselves to be liars and have failed to honor agreements reached.
If the AMPTP show me the specific proposals they’ve made (even though they’ve demonstrated a despicable tendency not to honor them), we can evaluate it line by line and make choices of what the proposal -is-, not what the AMPTP’S puffery, generalities and time-proven dishonest accounting would like to sucker us into believing they mean what their press agents purport them to.
As to anybody choosing to have their strike authorization vote intercepted by some other party before it reaches them, if ever, that was their choice to interrupt and delay their communications. It’s nobody’s problem but one solely of their own creation. Those of us who care enough to vote will do so in a timely manner well within the timeframe SAG puts forth. Period. Those who don’t will have a bevy of self-serving excuses not to.
Sure, SAG go ahead and strike. You can hang out with all the people being layed off from Univeral, Paramount, Viacom, etc.
I see the AMPTP interweb and logo still blows. Did they use the free webtools from wordpress or some such blogging site for this? Seriously…my freshman year roommate crafted a slicker web presence for his run for hall president than this garbage.
Sterling,
Maybe you didn’t scroll down far enough to find the two links — a summary and the full offer — both available for download.
When are you all going to finally get it?! They will lie, lie, lie, lie, all the way to their graves. I know. I worked for these people! They are shit. And I am ashamed to have ever been a part of what they are about. But, if you don’t bring the fight to them, and I mean FIGHT, you will lose. I see people saying over and over how now is not the time because of the recession, the economy. Well, you’re dead wrong. Now IS the time to fight them. You fight them when they are bleeding and you have a shot. They will never give in when the green is rolling in. They will be able to afford to wait you out forever. But, now, they can’t. Go for the throat. It’s your only chance.
Let’s see… The United Auto Workers are being asked by the government to take rollbacks. So forget about us BTL’s why is SAG better than the blue collar worker of our oldest industry? IATSE is being asked to take rollbacks.
Times are tough.
Like it or not the ones you want to hurt will never hurt the way you want them to.
It is a crap deal, but how can you not see the writing on the wall- your own long standing SAG members are producing AFTRA cable shows right now- the switch is happening beneath your noses and a strike would only allow them out of contracts they don’t want to pay anymore.
And the key is that they have the money- that means it is never an equal playing field- welcome to the rest of society and how it works when you are an employee.
SpaceMonkey: Specifically what rollbacks are you seeing in the offer? Please show me that specific rollbacks versus the current (expired) contract.
Not just in Hollywood, but why is it that, whenever the word “strike” is uttered, everybody blames unions? Unions wouldn’t have been invented had it not been for management abuse. That’s like blaming the rape victim for the assault. However corrupt some unions may have become, it doesn’t change the fact that labor fires the second shot, not the first.
Thank you, WS, for pointing out that the pdf links are not simply the same html information.
And thank you more, Nikki, for modifying your own link so that it takes people to the exact specific offer link — rather than AMPTP’s creative “interpretation” of what the actual offer means in real terms (the former link).
Cool. I, and others, have some reading material tonight, and in the days ahead.
Big fan of voters getting educated, WS, even if our conclusions differ. So thanks to you and Nikki for pointing out, and now linking directly to, the actual offer as opposed to the puffery-filled-creative-interpretation-language.
great!
PLEASE someone let SAG know that we are in the middle of an economic crisis!! I can NOT believe they are even suggesting a strike to their members when there are fewer & fewer jobs out there and a strike will only make it worse for their OWN members. GET A CLUE PEOPLE!
And why when every other guild made a deal SAG thinks they deserve better?!….and in a worse economic time.
PLEASE someone help SAG get in touch with REALITY!!!!
As a lifelong republican, I hated unions.
…until I started reading this blog during the WGA strike, and now this. I still think Unions are unnecessary in most industries, but this has opened my eyes to how hard things can be for creative talent, not to mention BTL workers.
100% agree with comment above — SAG desperately needs to get in touch with REALITY.
I’ve just perused the AMPTP offer summary (obviously one-sided), and one huge thought came to mind: what concessions were made?
I, for one, would like to see a blow-by-blow of the negotiations from day 1: what each entity started with, what was (supposedly) conceded at each turn, down to what SAG has conceded during this last mediation (we know the AMPTP didn’t give a thing). The AMPTP claims concessions – what were they?
I am by no means doubting the SAG NegCom or what they’ve told us is happening but I think we’d all have a better grasp of what we’re all up against if we were to see for ourselves the slithery way the AMPTP has been “negotiating”. It’s all water under the bridge at this point, so why not give out the details? Complete transparency on both sides should be part of the educational aspects of the strike authorization vote.
I’m sure someone at SAG has this information and even if it’s a 30-page report I’ll read every word.
Working Actor who wants to keep acting:
Try dinner theater. That is, if you’re capable of memorizing two hours worth of lines. Theater is where the real acting is after all. Notice how those who can’t act for shit never last long in the theater whereas they breed like rabbits in the movie business.