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UPDATES: SAG & AMPTP Agree On New Contracts For TV/Basic Cable Toons
Today, the SAG National Board, with AMPTP, approved the terms of new 2-year contracts covering members working in Television Animation and Basic Cable Animation. That pact was not sent to the membership for a vote, amazing as that sounds. On the other hand, the Basic Cable live action tentative agreement is out to SAG members now, and ballots must be received by August 26th. But the secrecy that pervades the actions by the current SAG National Majority -- consisting of Unite For Strength on the Hollywood Board, United Screen Actors Nationwide in the NY Division, and United Union Performers controlling the Regional Branches -- just keeps continuing. I've learned that, originally, senior staff, UFS, NY and the RBD did not want to send the Basic Cable live action contract out to the membership for a vote. Led by Sam Freed, Ned Vaughn and David Hartley Margolin, the SAG National Majority wanted to bypass the membership, ignore the constitution, and approve a contract that no more than 1/3 of the board members understood or saw in print.
They wanted only the board to approve the contract which is a clear violation of the SAG constitution. (It states that "membership ratification shall not be required for any collective bargaining agreement which the Board Of Directors determines in good faith is not to be used in widespread or industry-wide application affecting a substantial portion of the membership, such as agreements covering low-budgets films, student films, or the like and interim contracts of short duration. Such agreements shall, however, be approved by a supermajority of 60% of the Board of Directors or National Executive Committee voting thereon." Article XI, Section 2).
The Animation Contract falls under Article XI Section 2, and has always been ratified by the Board or NEC, but then only after caucuses are held to get input from the SAG community. In this case, SAG held video and teleconference caucuses around the country: two in LA, and one in NY, Miami, Chicago and San Francisco.
By contrast, the Basic Cable live action contract fails to fall under Article XI Section 2. It is not only industry-wide, it was negotiated by Carole Lombardini of the AMPTP. SAG chief negotiator John McGuire, and Interim National Executive Director David White, and others wanted to convince the board that it was not industry-wide and was more like SAG's animation or industrial contracts. Which is bullshit.
One of their other arguments of the SAG National Majority was that, back in 2006, when SAG finally was able to re-negotiate the Basic Cable contract after 22 years, the big actors union didn't send it out to the members. Instead, SAG held exhaustive caucuses with the members, wages&working committee meetings, a 91% strike authorization vote nationally, an an overwhelming approval by the national board surpassing the required 60% threshold.
Yet another argument was posed by Unite For Strength leader Ned Vaughn, who claimed internally that the membership already had voted on the Basic Cable contract when they voted up the TV/Theatrical pact. HUH? The two contracts have completely different residual structures.
I'm told a Membership First member -- some sources tell me it was David Jolliffe -- stood up and asked board members to raise their hands if they knew what was the residual structure of the Basic Cable agreement. No one from UFS or the Regional Branches raised their hands. Only a few from the NY Division. Yet 6 of 7 hands from the Membership First people went up out of 70 board members.
Senior staff didn't even provide a copy of the agreement for each board member to go over before the vote.
This sure sounds like the board was about to be railroaded. (I can't confirm conspiracy-spinning emails claiming the AMPTP's Carol Lombardini was guaranteed a quick "yes" vote from the SAG National Majority.)
Membership First demanded that the contract be sent out for ratification -- and won, but not without a huge fight. Because the UFS, NY and Regional members of the SAG National Majority were prepared to take away the members right to vote. I've been trying to lift the veil of secrecy imposed by the current UFS-NYD-RBD coalition, and just thought SAG members needed to know this.
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Okay boys and girls, this is a PRIME example of why we need to get U4S and USAN people OFF OF THE SAG BOARD – nationally and locally! They have taken over SAG entirely and will continue to do so until we all get together and run them out of town. We still have that voting power (for now, anyway).
Why should the “minority” board members have to “fight for” running SAG within the guidelines of our constitution? Does anybody wonder now why Anne Marie Johnson is suing SAG? Somebody has to step up and stop this!
It is imperative that we raise our voices and stop this bullshit! I do not have any legal connections, nor the funds to start legal proceedings. However, someone out there does. Why isn’t the NLRB involved by now? Why isn’t AFL-CIO removing these people from the board? WTF?
David White, our “interim” NED is a lawyer. If he runs SAG this way – against SAG’s own constitution – he should be disbarred at the very least.
Take your union BACK, dammit! Get off of your lazy, apathetic asses and FIGHT for SOMETHING! We are all about to completely lose our vote (already have, apparently, in some cases) which is the heart and soul of SAG! These people are only trying to save AFTRA before it drowns in debt, and they’re using SAG to do it. WAKE UP!
The vast SAG membership is SAG, not the friggin’ board!
SAG’s already dead. The last contract killed our union.
Move on.
SAG members must give the simple-minded majority the boot! Unit for Strength is trying to sabotage the Screen Actors Guild. Ned Vaughn and the rest of his terrorist group must be removed in the upcoming SAG election
“the SAG National Majority wanted to… approve a contract that no more than 1/3 of the board members understood or saw in print.”
– Jeez, anybody would think they were voting on healthcare legislation!
To get a little perspective check out the list of SAG cable shows listed in the following Membership First article:
http://membershipfirst.blogspot.com/2009/07/anne-marie-johnson-leads-2009.html
It would really be best for SAGW to just split off and become a REAL actors union…
…split from the TV anchors, weathermen and sportscasters… it’s screwing up everything you really want to accomplish…
Their needs are not your needs. So why not part amicably and let each form their own union?
Thank you Nikki! I think we got some future Congressmen/women on the BOD.
Thanks Nikki. I’m a SAG member over 30 years, and I can’t believe they try to pull this bullshit.
Since when have actors been trusted to treat other actors decently?
This is a very old story and the reality is there are multiple angles when looking at it; none of which are about ideology. It seems unproductive and costly to send out a mass ballot to membership when only a miniscule number of actors is even affected by the contract and is aware of its nuances and inner workings; especially at a time when the fiscal health of SAG is of great concern. In the past, caucuses of animation performers have gathered together and have voted yea or nay when it comes to matters affecting them. I don’t see this as “qualified voting.” I see it more as a means for those who are directly engaged in the work and have a vested interest in the wages and working conditions governing it to have a voice in their contract. If one makes their livelihood as a background performer, or a stunt person, or a dancer, and has never participated in the recording of an animated program or film, how accurately can one determine whether terms of a contract are valid/beneficial/equitable/harmful or not? Even a performer who does a significant amount of voice work, but a very small amount in the animation arena, isn’t well-versed enough to understand the ins and outs of the work or the contract. Only a constituency that is well-informed and regularly engaged in a specific type of performing can determine what is best for them. One is certainly entitled to an opinion but it should, in all fairness, end at that. I truly believe the best way to negotiate and vote on these contracts (as well as a number of others that have unique job requirements or qualifications, i.e. Stunts) is through the aforementioned caucuses. A final note: as far as one group derailing or hijacking the process by averting a membership-wide vote and leaving the ultimate disposition of a contract to board members, this is not precedent. Historically, there have been previous instances in which the resolution of an issue or voting on a contract has been determined by our duly elected leadership; rightly or wrongly depending upon how one views the outcome.
Yep. There’s a reason UFS is called United For Suckers.
Wake up, people. You have a RIGHT to vote. YOU PAY DUES. By not letting you vote, they are literally stealing your money, both present and future.
Nikki -
Thank you for waiting and getting some of the behind-the-scenes details before posting.
The additional information you provided is NOT, as boardwalker mischaracterized it, a “very old” story.
Sounds like another administration in power right now.
Boardwalk it states in the constitution the exact protocol that has to be followed. It is illegal to circumvent that no matter how convenient it is. If UFS is willing to overlook one part of the constitution, what else are they ignoring??p
I would venture to say that what is going on with Basic Cable is not only unconstitutional but that the Basic Cable deal itself violates federal labor law.
Why?
Because there were no wages & working condition meetings held specifically for Basic Cable (unlike TV/Theatrical, those took place in a quite orderly fashion before UFS came to power).
The idea behind the law is this. Normally we as a country believe in the idea of freedom of contract in employment i.e. that an individual normally freely bargains the terms of employment with a prospective employer. When you join a union, you give up that right to others who do the bargaining for you, which is a process known as ‘collective bargaining’.
As a check on the potential abuse of power of those doing the collective bargaining, federal labor law requires there to be input from the individual union members into the negotiations process, the most efficient form of these being a wages & working conditions meeting. There anyone, from the tiniest player up to the megastar can come in and give input into the union standard agreements. There are no guarantees that the demands presented at a W&W meeting by any union member (star or not) will be negotiated, much less secured from prospective employers, but there is an opportunity to be heard (a kind of due process if you will for each and every union member).
The problem with the leadership change at the top of SAG is that when these people came to power among other things they dispensed with the previous guidelines for holding W&W meetings. So no meetings for the specific Basic Cable contract were held.
Now I suppose that one could try some variant of Ned Vaughn’s argument above, that somehow the W&W meetings held for TV/Theatrical should suffice for the ratification of Basic Cable. But that argument defies logic, the 2 pacts are different and assuming that boardwalker’s (to my mind crazy and against all evidence to the contrary, because I hear from too many actors famous & not that they actually are seeking work in Basic Cable and/or field offers from those shows to keep up the fiction that Basic Cable is a niche market & deserving of special favorable financial treatment to ‘help out’ the conglomerates) argument that Basic Cable is only worked by a select few actors, where was those actors opportunity to be heard on the Basic Cable contract before it was ‘negotiated’ (which clearly didn’t happen, because the AMPTP just called up the ‘people newly in charge’ at the guild and said ’same terms as TV/Theatrical, kinda sorta, whatever, just get ‘er done’).
So why is Basic Cable being railroaded through?
Well there are some actors who get more money producing Basic Cable shows than acting in them. They clearly as producers have the incentive to minimize the amount their shows pay to their fellow actors (that makes the conglomerates happy) even though as actors, guild members and in a few cases guild board members & administrators, they are selling their peers down the river.
There are other actors on Basic Cable shows who while they don’t get production money, have lucrative principal contracts to protect. The business being a roller-coaster ride financially speaking (unpredictable income streams, one year you’re on top, the next, who knows?) it is understandable they wouldn’t want to do anything to jeopardize the current money flow. But again when these people get elected to the leadership of the guild, they have to *represent* all of their fellow guild members and act in the collective best interests of them.
If we want to talk about conduct unbecoming, I’m thinking violating one or more federal labor laws in the name of self-interest is a pretty good example of CU.
But I digress, because the real danger for U F-, er ‘Screw’ SAG and the other partisans running the union into the ground is that one or more actors here reads what I’ve just written, calls up a competent employment lawyer and sues the bejeezsus out of the guild & undoes the Basic Cable agreement.
If you want to keep fawning over those at the top who are picking your pockets bare (and hoping that if you’re nice to them you might get work, which ironically seems to be their strategy with the conglomerates — ‘if we’re pleasant to them & do what they want, they’ll share their vast profits with us and make us rich too, right?’ — while not realizing that those execs figure every dollar they personally don’t pocket is going to some other bastard, including the ‘talent’), do them a favor & don’t call a lawyer and vote for their slates once again.
But if you want your palms to be crossed with more silver as actors (which is the point of unions & collective bargaining for everyone to get paid fairly), then for goodness sakes vote No on Basic Cable and while you’re in the process of voting, stay the heck away from UFS and USAN candidates. In NY you can vote for the Solidarity And Gains NOW slate while in LA there are plenty of independents & M1st-ers to pick from.
None of this surprises me (it saddens me of course) but hey, it’s not my guild or my future or my paycheck at stake. These congloms play rough and if you want to lie down for them & hope they’ll throw you a few crumbs you’re welcome to do so. But know that they’re never going to do better for you than that unless you *force* them to.
As my late mother used to say: “You can’t be treated like a doormat if you won’t lie down”.
VDOVault is right on with his take on the Basic Cable situation. Ned V, Ken Howard, Sam Free, Richard Masur and all members of the NY/RBD and UFS members for the national board did not want the Basic Cable Contract going out to the members. Ned V. and Sam Freed stated that the contract didn’t go out to the members in 2006 so why should it go out now? Three huge reasons: Basic Cable was not as prominent in 2006 as it is now. And more importantly, there was no New Media aspect of the 2006 Basic Cable Contract. There is now. The same crappy New Media terms that our members, unfortunately, ratified in the TV/Theatrical agreement were automatically rolled into the Basic Cable contract. Take a look and read what it involves. And 3, in 2006, a negotiating committee and negotiator Sally Weaver, negotiated the terms with the AMPTP. This time around, there was no negotiating team and the whole affair was handled by one man, John McGuire. He and only he “negotiated” this contract with no member involvement. No W&W’s, not caucuses, no nothing. And it was John McGuire who pushed to have the contract “ratified” by the 71 members of the National Board. The majority of which had no idea about the details of the contract. In 2006, there was a fully constituted negotiating committee, W&W’s and nationally held caucuses were SAG attained 91% Strike Authorization. UFS/NY/RBD boards do not want members too involved with the workings of this union. What took place at the last national meeting is just a precursor to Qualified Voting. It’s coming folks.
It is all very confusing. From what I can find and I hope someone can either back me up or correct me here, that the basic cable contract terms were always tied to the TV/Theatrical contract with the exception of residuals. Before 2006 the last time SAG renegotiated the cable contract terms was in 1992.
In 2006 SAG held caucuses in five cities concerning live cable and yet passed the contract without members voting on it. In that contract Alan Rosenberg got major gains in residuals.
So for 16 years SAG had a open-ended cable contract that was tied to the TV/Theatrical contract with the exception of residuals (the only difference between the two is residuals) then in 2006 SAG gets a major increase in residuals but the membership doesn’t get to vote on it.
So why should we as members get to vote on it this time? Well it could be that this is the first time it includes New Media.
Why didn’t SAG and AFTRA merge again? Who in SAG fought against it? That’s the moment when SAG opened the door to irrelevance. When no more celluloid is being unspooled, what will SAG be?