BAFTA Awards: What ‘Artist’, Dujardin, Streep … 
64th BAFTA Awards Winners: ‘The Artist’, Meryl … 
BAFTA 2012 Preview: Very British Affair Takes On … 
RECORD-BREAKING WEEKEND! 4 Films Open $20+M: ‘The … 
Remembered: Jennifer Hudson To Perform Whitney Houston … 
Live From NY, It’s Jean Dujardin On 
R.I.P. Whitney Houston 
TOLDJA! Indomina-BET Buy Sundance ‘LUV’ 
Midnight Madness For ‘Breaking Dawn’ DVD 
Saoirse Ronan Bigger Teen Action Queen 
WME Signs Writer-Director Jon Kasdan 
‘Glee’s Jane Lynch Joins Indie Film Comedy 
Universal Revives ‘Dracula Year Zero’ With … 
Jodie Foster Sending Mel Gibson Film ‘The … 
‘Roseanne’ Reunion: John Goodman To Co-Star In … 
UPDATE: Closing Arguments Conclude In Golden Globes Trial; … 
Series Adaptation Of ‘Legion’ With … 
Lionsgate Calms Investors With Talk About Charlie Sheen, … 
Ridley Scott Commits To Next Direct McCarthy’s … 
Marvel Studio’s Tim Connors Defects To Legendary As … 
UPDATE: Warner Bros Lawyers Dig In Garbage Over ‘The … 
The Screen Actors Guild tonight sent this email to its members:
Dear Screen Actors Guild Member,
In an “open letter” full-page ad published today in the Los Angeles Times, eight entertainment industry CEO’s whose annual salaries and bonuses exceed the amount needed to achieve labor peace for our industry asked why SAG wants a better deal than the other Hollywood guilds.
What they conveniently left out is the fact that the deal they are offering includes rollbacks no other guilds had to accept. Those other deals also included new media loopholes that would prevent SAG actors from sharing in the studios’ success in any meaningful way when this technology inevitably explodes. To find out how our proposals are different — not better or worse — but simply different than other unions’ deals, go to http://www.sag.org/tvtheatrical-negotiations and download “Questions and Answers Regarding Negotiations” and “Fact Checking the AMPTP.”
A generation ago we cut the AMPTP slack in crafting a video deal under the assumption that it would be revisited and made fair once the technology took off. But for more than two decades the AMPTP continued to give us only a tiny sliver of the billions of dollars of windfall revenue they made selling videocassettes and DVDs.
For SAG members, the question is this: Do you trust the AMPTP? As our colleagues at the Writers Guild of America are learning, the AMPTP has its own interpretation of the deals it makes.
SAG does not want a strike. We made the decision to seek a strike authorization only after the AMPTP continued to stonewall through negotiations and mediation.
Now, the AMPTP is attempting to use today’s economic uncertainty to intimidate us into signing away our future for decades to come. Meanwhile, they spent $100,000 on an ad!
Obviously, we have their attention. Send the AMPTP a message by approving a strike authorization to empower SAG’s national board, so the AMPTP knows that we mean business.
Loading ...
SAG is delusional at this point.
God help us all.
Today the CEO of Ford decided he could work for $1 a year to help his company. Just a thought for the “Gang of Eight” that signed that very expensive letter yesterday.
The only reason the AMPTP hates SAG is because SAG is the only thing that actually limits the AMPTP’s control. No one else will stand up to them and they know that SAG wields real power–something the AMPTP can’t stand because they’re already rich so the only thing they’re missing is total control…the current campaign they’re mounting against a possible strike is pathetic and transparent; labor’s not going to go anywhere except maybe out the studio door.
You might want to quit trying to take down the eight CEOs for their salaries and bonuses. One would have to guess the top eight earners in SAG would actually dwarf the CEO number. Move on from there, please.
“Now, the AMPTP is attempting to use today’s economic uncertainty to intimidate us into signing away our future for decades to come. Meanwhile, they spent $100,000 on an ad!”
Seems like a drop in the bucket to what the studios are forced to pay in “For Your Consideration” trade ads for actors.
Shows how much you know stiff. Both the Prez and all the Board of Directors don’t make a dime except for expences that must be ok’ed. The highest in expences is around $20,000. The NED makes around $400,000 a year. What SAG spends on all thier 500+ employees is about what just 3 CEO’s make a year.
Hey “sick of it all”, God helps those who help themselves. There’s nothing delusional about standing up for yourself and your livelihood in the face of corporate corruption and greed.
Unions and Guilds exist for a reason. If Big Media was trustworthy, and actually cared about working class talent, then we wouldn’t need a Guild. But they don’t, so we do.
And “Workin’ Stiff”, the point of mentioning that the eight CEO’s collectively make more in salary and bonuses than “the amount needed to achieve labor peace for our industry” is to demonstrate the hypocrisy of their argument that SAG is out of touch with reality given the current financial situation.
If the CEO’s are that concerned about the economy, I invite them to donate their yearly income and bonuses to offset the cost of the SAG increases. Perhaps it’s time for them to give back to the industry (and the middle class workers) that have made them so wealthy. Since they care so damn much, right?
And those top eight SAG earners don’t need a union/guild any more than those CEOs. Don’t think this whole strike thing is about that. And I’m a working stiff too, and get to eat that shit sandwich of a new IATSE deal because we have zero solidarity. So let’s move on from that, too.
While Mr. Workman expressed it rather colorfully, he does have a point.
Moving forward, one thing all of the creative guilds and other unions need to do is stand firm on eliminating the no-strike clauses from their contracts. We need to unchain ourselves so we can back each other at the bargaining table with real power.
If IATSE knew they could turn to other unions to walk with them, they could have stood firm for a better contract. In the long run, bargaining away our right to stand in solidarity with our fellow union members has been hurtful to all the unions.
I’m confused. What happens if SAG doesn’t get the 75% approval vote for a strike? Do they immediately take the offer on the table now?
It’s a big game of chicken. SAG doesn’t want to strike. They just want some negotiating capital to hold over them. But if the AMPTP simple says, “Go strike. The public will just think your greedy. We’ll run re-runs and AFTRA shows and non-union reality. We’ll be fine. Then in 6 months we’ll come back and give you a little bit more than what we’re offering now and you’ll take it. Hehe. We win. Evil will always triumph because good is dumb.”
Like the rest of corporate America, the members of the AMPTP want to keep privatizing their profits and socializing their losses. They don’t want to share the profits they’ll be reaping in new media with the DGA, WGA, IATSE and SAG when times are good but when times are bad suddenly “we’re all in this together” and all the guilds should take rollbacks to “help keep the town working”.
Please…
It is just as simple as this, the top 8 CEO’s that signed that ad on Monday are worth much much more collectively than the top 8 SAG actors. That list starts with Tom Cruise at $100 million than drops down to Tom Hanks at #2 at $20 million. It then drops down to about under $2 million for Jim Carrey. Even if you include Hugh Laurie’s $50 million TV deal, the top eight on SAG membership lists still doesn’t top the top 8 on the Moguls list.
Plus, they forgot to replace Peter Chernin with Rupert Murdoch and Brad Grey with Sumner Redstone. If that is the case, forget about comparing the SAG with the moguls. Their combined total earnings for the year, including stock options and bonuses, would be far more than the payrolls of all baseball players on all 30 teams including their farm systems, and this does include the New York Yankees organization.
Rupert Murdoch makes much more in a day than A-Rod makes in a year, and “workin’ stiff” has the balls to say that any top actor makes more than all eight CEO’s combined. Do you realize that Rupert could make an offer to buy the entire Ford Motor Company in one swoop and give the Ford shareholders a $40 per share incentive to approve the deal. If that were to happen, given where Ford stock is right now, I would approve the deal in a single heartbeat if I were a Ford shareholder. That is how powerful the man is, now if Tom Cruise tries a takeover of Ford, he is going to need tons of help even to get Ford management to agree to sellout to him. In today’s world, money equals power and SAG is pretty much powerless against these folks.
“Grippin’ in LA” – my favorite post in recent memory.
“the members of the AMPTP want to keep privatizing their profits and socializing their losses”
Exactly f-ing right, and well put. Thanks. I now have a short and pointed summary of everything that’s wrong with the AMPTP.
And I can only believe that the incoming administration, along with the current climate of CEO backlash (the auto industry CEOs took private JETS to Washington?!) can only spell trouble for our own out-of-touch AMPTP bigwigs. SAG is pulling a Goldilocks, IMHO. Just right.
Don’tcha just love those AMPTP shills like “Workin’ Stiff” & “sick of it all”? I thought they popped their last yang when the Writer’s strike ended.
Oh wait, since everyone’s on to their pathetic tactics they did!
Hope they’re payin’ you enough…
Dear Alan Rosenberg, Please don’t strike to protest “corporate corruption and greed”. Trying to right historic wrongs was what caused the WGA strike to fail. After months and months without a contract your leverage has decreased. And peoples stomach for a second strike in this economy (this web site excepted) has bottomed out. Make the best deal you can, and live to fight another day. Like divorce, there is no winning in a strike, only degrees of losing.
mheister, I believe the Taft-Hartley Act makes solidarity strikes illegal.
The Taft-Hartley Act prohibited jurisdictional strikes, wildcat strikes, solidarity or political strikes, secondary boycotts.
Hey e…just so you know, i’m not a corporate shill. I don’t get paid to post. I work for an AMPTP company and was merely making a couple of debatable points for the sake of possibly balancing the discussion. God forbid.
All these comments are so off point. It doesn’t matter how something get delivered it’s where it airs. Networks aren’t going away. What was the difference when a signal went over the air and then transmitted thru a cable. Nothing, everybody still got residuals from network TV and cable if they didn’t give it away. You all make a bullshit argument. The only valid point that I saw here was repeats might go away. I doubt that though, most shows make 22 episodes a year what about the other 30 weeks. More howie
I guess Mike Farrell is a corporate shill.
To: to just a thought
The residuals you speak of on cable are paltry compared to national network prime time (initiated many decades ago) yet actor’s images are still used to sell advertising and reap fortunes for the producers. And, now TV network are reaping more revenue thru another stream – the internet – and the producers want to give an even smaller residual to the actor. Actors need their residuals to make insurance, pension, get vested, etc. for retirement. So……. yes, while they will get some residuals — it is not nearly what the network residuals are and yet the viewer is still the same consumer buying the products advertised. 40% of people viewing network shows this year viewed them on the internet.