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SAG should announce on Monday its timetable for the strike authorization vote and aftermath. Also that night, SAG will be holding a “Town Hall Meeting” for membership:
Member Town Hall Meeting in Los Angeles
The AMPTP has failed to address the needs of actors at the bargaining table despite the efforts of your negotiating team and the intervention of a federal mediator. Your national negotiating committee has directed that a strike authorization ballot be sent to paid up SAG members for their consideration and approval. This Town Hall meeting will give Hollywood members an update on the negotiations and a chance to ask questions about the upcoming strike authorization ballot referendum. A strike authorization from SAG members will show the AMPTP that the unique needs of actors cannot be addressed by a pattern of bargaining. Actors needs must be addressed for deal to be made. Don’t miss this important meeting. Let your voice be heard.
When: Monday, December 8th, 2008
7 p.m. – 9:30 p.m.Where: Harmony Gold Preview House
7655 Sunset Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90046Note: Please Bring your SAG membership card (paid thru October 2008) for admittance. Parents/Guardians of SAG members under 18 years old may attend with the minor
Editor-in-Chief Nikki Finke - tip her here.
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Look at all of your articles today: Viacom layoffs, Universal layoffs, Paramount layoffs, Hollywood Reporter layoffs, Variety layoffs, highest national layoffs in 36 years, and on and on. Let’s see: wow. What a good time to strike! Hmmmm. Am I missing something here? Like leverage? Like any logic whatsoever?
I wholeheartedly agree with Mike Farrell, Danny deVito, Rhea Perlman, Arye Gross, and Amy Aquino: Our new deal ain’t perfect, but, let’s stay at work, and improve our deal in 3 years. The economy is cratering, and a strike would only make matters much worse.
I humbly encourage all interested parties, cast and crew alike, to show up on December 8th and let your voices be heard. This town, this state, can NOT afford a strike right now. And please, join the Facebook group, film crew against a SAG strike right now, which is almost 5,000 members strong. Thank you.
I am really hoping my fellow actors would prefer to still work and have a career rather than have a useless strike where we ALL will loose.
The job market for actors has already shrunk after the WGA strike and we do not need it to shrink further. If you are not Nicole Kidman or George Clooney you better realize that a strike will only set all our careers back. way back.
The economy is beyond terrible right now, people are loosing jobs left and right so the last thing we need is to be out of work too! As great as it would be to get the perfect deal that is not realistic and we need to learn from the United Auto Workers union mess and realize we need to be current with the times not flying in the sky thinking we deserve some better deal than the other entertainment unions — especially in these horrid scary economic times.
The Harmony Gold Theater only holds 400. Are they really expecting that much apathy?
Or are they counting on it?
Strike = Disaster for SAG and Entertainment Community
Strike = Bad Decision made by Guild out of Touch with Reality
Strike = Pie in the Sky Crusade
Strike = No Work
Strike = Career Setback
I don’t think the fact that the Screen Actors Guild was formed in 1933, at the absolute height of the Depression, can be emphasized enough. Imagine the balls on that group of actors when they formed a guild, told producers to take their 50% pay cut and shove it up their ass – and won. It was “all in” folks. Those people knew they either took a stand, or went home. They put everything on the line to save themselves and many, many others, so we could be here today discussing a profession that at least holds the hope of returning a decent living, with enough talent and luck.
There will never be a good time to strike. Or, a “better” time. That’s just nonsense. Let’s at least try to be honest about the thing. Whatever the economy, whatever the issue, there will always be enormous skepticism about striking – and rightfully so.
But any SAG member who educates him or herself has to face the probability that this is a power play by the AMPTP to phase out residuals, clip consent, make product placement a non-paying requirement for TV and film, and take away the protection of force majeure.
You want to give up half your income? I don’t. To deny that is a distinct possibility is being dishonest if you truly understand what’s at stake.
We see already the WGA filing federal arbitration because the AMPTP is not paying them new media residuals on the BAD contract we’re fighting off.
If you believe the producers, once they get this in writing, will renegotiate in three years, once they have established a beachhead in producing original content non-union, and phasing out residuals as all content moves to the web, then I think you are not being honest with yourself.
The AMPTP is pushing to get all the guilds in line on this, and they’ve got everyone but SAG – and SAG is the one union that can, conceivably, do enough damage to the AMPTP to make them move off this new world of fucking the unions, and come back with a realistic contract.
If you really believe, in three years, that SAG will be in any better position, or have any more leverage than we do now, I think you need to come up with some realistic justification for that point of view, besides “I don’t want to strike,” because, if that’s all we’ve got as a union when faced with this level of damage to an actor’s already incredibly shaky ability to make a living, then, let’s face it – we’re done.
As this gets closer to the edge, I believe the actors who are actually paying attention see this negotiation for what it is: a massive realignment of what it means to be a professional actor, and a precedent that, once gained, will not be undone.
We may as well call their bluff now and see if they are serious about causing a work stoppage to avoid paying actors fairly and not putting a massive non-union space in our own contract.
It’s now. Not three years from now. Now.
Pretty that some are posting negative comments about an informational meeting. Kind of tips your hand.
What is it about information that scares you so much?
While I realize unions can be single-minded, even the attempt to get a strike authorization is unforgivable in this economy.
I don’t think the fact that the Screen Actors Guild was formed in 1933, at the absolute height of the Depression, can be emphasized enough.
It has absolutely no bearing on today’s reality.
In 1933, Hollywood actually had an impressive audience. It was the main source of entertainment options. That’s no longer true. Less than 20 percent of people watch movies now. Today’s hit TV shows would have been cancelled as massive flops just a few years ago. The notion that the industry is recession proof is ignorance of the highest order.
I don’t think the fact that the Screen Actors Guild was formed in 1933, at the absolute height of the Depression, can be emphasized enough.
It has absolutely no bearing on today’s reality.
Not to mention in 1933 the studios were owned by… the studios. And the industry was hardly global.
That being said, it’s not impossible, but it really helps to have some leverage. Maybe SAG does, maybe they have a secret weapon.
Can non- SAG members come to this informational meeting? I work on a major network TV show, below the line and I am terrified about the possibility of another strike.
If I am to endure another, I’d like to know what you are fighting for…
The Comment above by Mars is right on the mark.
100% agree. We all need to clue in and not be
ignorant about this matter and how damaging a strike
would be to the entire industry – including to all the actors.
I guess you’ve heard that Sony is currently marketing a TV with direct internet access. This is the shape of things to come over the next 3 years. If you watch it on the internet with the current 2008 contract offered: no residuals at all, ever.
Even if you don’t buy a newer TV your cable box will convert the internet streams right to your current TV.
So all TV will work WILL PAY NO RESIDUALS with the 2008 contract the A.M.P.T.P. is offering to S.A.G.
I’m sorry the A.M.P.T.P is making us do this, but us S.A.G. actors who work rely on those residuals to survive. We simply have to vote YES on the STRIKE Ballot.
I don’t think any of us take the vote lightly and we are being forced to strike by the A.M.P.T.P
please aim you frustration and anger at the amptp they are the ones forcing us in the screen actors guild to strike.
we need a fair deal or we have no other logical choice but to approve a strike.
To Zachary: for those of us who don’t happen to agree with you, it’s not the “information” of this meeting that scares us so much. It’s the “flipness” of comments like yours that make so many of us worried. After all that we have been through the last year, if you think this meeting is just about dispensing information, we feel you are not acknowledging the obvious intent of this gathering. To us, who care about our union every bit as much as you do, this is the negotiating committee beating the war drums for nothing less than a strike. Pure and simple. And it’s not a good idea.
It’s getting really, really annoying to hear these battle cries of, “we HAVE to strike.” The implication is that you have some sort of right to put me and all the other innocent bystanders out of work.
The fact is, your leadership blew the negotiations. Why should the rest of us in the business have to pay for your leadership’s ineptitude?
And before you call me a “studio shill”, I’m not. I’m a crew member on a show. I don’t want to lose my job. Nor do a lot of other people.
The SAG diehards are willing to raze the entire town to the ground just to prove that they are in the right. It’s like a foolhardy king going to war and not caring that everyone, on his side and on the other side, gets slaughtered, and all possesions are lost. Hey King, what’s the point of fighting when your subjects, who are supposed to benefit from this war, will be dead at the end of all of this?
“Give me a break”
Exactly. So, WE don’t vote up a strike authorization to try to protect our ability to make a living because YOU make your living off us?
Believe me – you’re barking up the wrong tree. Get pissed at the AMPTP, not SAG for trying to make it still possible for people to make a living acting.
Please…
Every actor I know is checking the “YES TO STRIKE” box on that ballot. In the end, it doesn’t really matter what anybody else wants from us actors, we are going to watch out for ourselves now.
And the irony about it all is that a better SAG contract protects the entire industry — so have some foresight folks.
Plus — there actually is no better time to strike than when it is perceived to “be the worse time to strike.” This means there is more pressure exerted on the AMPTP to make a fair deal sooner — less of a chance this will drag on.
Support the actors — this is good for everyone in the end.
The set I worked on all week everybody, mostly the crew, was talking in favor about voting YES on SAG’s strike ballot, and nobody more than those in IATSE.
I’m not sure in what part of the business you people spewing about how wrong SAG is work. But from what I’ve seen SAG has all the support of the other unions.
T-Rex -
Thank you for reiterating that point. The AMPTP’s goal is to push a whole range of serious rollbacks on SAG. Because the moguls are busy migrating content distribution to the Internet as quickly as they can, any deal that treats residuals and productions at any budget for new media differently than for “traditional” media constitutes a serious rollback. SAG gave in on DVD, and the guild NEVER saw the AMPTP make good on its promise to revisit it when it became a cash cow. If we take the moguls’ “last best final” offer, we may as well not bother having a guild.
I still can’t help but think the current window-dressing budget-cutting measures and even the firings at the studios are essentially nothing more than a cynical ploy to plead poverty and somehow convince just enough actors to cave on the strike vote. Let’s remember the networks and studios used the WGA strike to dump a bunch of housekeeping deals they’d wanted to get rid anyway. The strike was just their face-saving excuse.
In short, the moguls are desperately doing everything they think they can get away with to create an atmosphere of fear. It’s BS, and these problems will suddenly disappear as soon as there’s a SAG contract, be it the extremely dangerous one they’re trying to shove down our throats or the more reasonable deal we’re engaged in the fight of our lives for. If Spielberg can charm a cool ten figures out of some Indian (dot) high-rollers, anyone around here think Bob Iger or Brad Grey can’t???
Anyone advocating that SAG roll over and take that rotten lousy deal is either a shill or has absolutely no clue whatsoever what’s at stake not just for SAG, but for the entire industry.
Paul, whatever set you claim to work on, the one I actually work on has 0.0% support for an actors strike. Let me repeat: 0.0. And that includes the actors. Methinks you’re a membership first shill making this up.
I sincerlely hope that Richard Masur will be allowed to express his opinions at the meeting. No matter how Rosenberg and Allen would like to silence him, his opinions are vital and important.
Anonymous wrote this: Methinks you’re a membership first shill making this up.
Anonymous–
I’ll infer you are a member of unite for strength, then, right?
I’ve never been involved in that petty internal spitting contest and don’t consider myself a member of membership first or unite for strength. I vote in elections, but I’m not politically active in the union.
I do appreciate your response as it does answer the question I posted as to where this alleged dissatisfaction with SAGs behavior is coming from when my experience shows an overwhelming support from our fellow union brothers and sisters.
Paul,
I work on 2 different shows, at 2 different studio lots. The support for SAG is Zero,0,0,0,0,0,0,. Even some of the actors think a strike in this economy is foolish. Most crew personal were split on the WGA strike (I supported it), but on SAG going out now, your “fellow union brothers and sisters” DO NOT SUPPORT YOU!
ANONYMOUS IS RIGHT!