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Los Angeles, (April 18, 2010) – Screen Actors Guild National Board of Directors, meeting in a two-day plenary in Los Angeles, appointed President Ken Howard as Chair of the Guild’s TV/Theatrical Joint Wages and Working (W&W) Conditions Plenary and Negotiating Committees.
Approved unanimously, the action states:
“The National Board appoints President Ken Howard the SAG National Chair of the Joint TV/Theatrical W&W Plenary Committee and the SAG National Chair of the Joint TV/Theatrical Negotiating Committee, who shall be a voting member of both committees.”
In other actions, the board confirmed the composition of the Screen Actors Guild portion of the Joint TV/Theatrical W&W Plenary and Negotiating Committees and approved a set of general parameters for the commencement of the Joint W&W Process. The committees will be constituted by the Guild’s division boards in the coming months.
Editor-in-Chief Nikki Finke - tip her here.
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That’s like putting Madoff in charge of the Federal investigation on Wall Street corruption!
Ha! What a joke SAG has become in the last three years. I need a drink!
Thank god! The return of the adults!
Now SAG at last has a chance to recover what was lost 5 years ago.
Five years of blundering madness are over.
“When you make money, we make money” was never claimed by me to be my idea, but it certainly makes sense to me. And Ken Howard said exactly that in an interview months back regarding new media. The sieve-heads who attack this idea make ridiculous assumptions that I, or others, mistakenly assumed there were billions of dollars available to “make money” from. No. Never said that. The idea is “precedent.” One of said sieve-heads said well over a year ago, “strike trumps precedent.”
Correct – IF YOU ARE WILLING TO STRIKE. Ken Howard and moderate SAG and AFTRA are NOT trying to create “strength in numbers.” They are trying to create a strike-free union.
Logic dictates you judge a person or group by it’s behavior, not its words.
Someone explain to me when moderate SAG or AFTRA have EVER shown real “this is the line in the sand because this is too important and has too many long-term consequences that are bad for rank and file actors” type behavior.
I’ll wait.
(an hour later)
Okay, SO, logic tells you IF moderate SAG and AFTRA pull off this “NEW UNION FOR A NEW WORLD!” it will be a “NEW WORLD WITH A BALL-LESS ACTOR’S UNION!”
Folks, Richard Masur, (arguably the philosophical and practical leader of moderate SAG) said DURING HIS PRESIDENCY -
“THERE WILL BE NO STRIKE DURING MY PRESIDENCY.”
That’s like wearing a neon hat when you walk into negotiations with the AMPTP that blinks: “WEAK… WEAK… WEAK…”
THAT’S their “philosophy.”
So, I’ll go with precedent (weak-ass, pathetic deals in VHS/DVD and cable that moderate SAG and AFTRA, with their ability to out-vote progressive SAG on every negotiating committee NEVER challenged in EVERY SINGLE NEGOTIATION FOR OVER 20 YEARS) and behavior as empirical evidence to gauge future action (or lack thereof) over dumb slogans and assurances about “strength in numbers.”
The Screen Actors Guild has been just fine for nearly 76 years without merger with the AFTRA and moderate-SAG merger zombies who are the unrequited undead of all time.
Countless merger attempts tabled in conference, two full votes of membership of both unions, all of this stretching back… 60 plus years.
NO MERGER. And, of course, despite the spittin’ distance the last time, it’s because smart people understand that AFTRA has NEVER behaved honorably for longer than the life span of a fruit fly. It ALWAYS undercuts SAG contracts when it gets the chance, it ALWAYS refuses transparency, not showing it’s OWN actors their OWN contracts, not showing their OWN NATIONAL BOARD MEMBERS information that has been requested, most recently the ACTUAL vote totals of the last V.O. vote, worked by about 900 people, seemingly ALL of whom thought the deal was a piece of shit and SAID so at a public meeting, but somehow the V.O. vote was voted up. But, Kim Roberts won’t SHOW THE ACTUAL VOTE TOTAL to a national board member who has formerly asked repeatedly on behalf of his constituents.
AFTRA won’t even divulge the number of AFTRA actors who are also SAG actors!
Why? Because almost 100% of AFTRA actors are SAG!
In other words “we” are already “them.”
But Kim Roberts and Roberta Reardon don’t want SAG or AFTRA members to know that until them sham their way into destroying The Screen Actors guild, the practical result of a “NEW UNION FOR A NEW WORLD!”
How about “The Screen Actors Guild” is declared by the NLRB to be the sole representative of all TV as well as film as was originally intended, there being no sound basis in existing documents for “digital” to be shared, since the method of capture does NOT require a different bargaining agent (AFTRA).
AFTRA becomes AFRA again and we go get a fair contract, and if he doesn’t deliver it, we throw Ken Howard out on his ass?
How about that?
Crap.
At last – a grownup in the room for SAG.
Hopefully, he’ll get a grasp on the new media before it slips through SAG’s fingers and is swallowed up in the fine print abyss. It’s safe to say that the old residual re-run formula is outdated and needs to be completely revamped to include the Hulu/Youtube/video/streaming repeats that are permeating the internet. We’ll see if The White Shadow has the skills to pull this off…
The “White Shadow” doesn’t even show up at 5757. He is a COMPLETELY non-existent “President” of The Screen Actors Guild.
And David White, the NED? The guy who formerly was the CEO of a company advising OTHER companies how to SCREW UNIONS?
He is making unilateral decisions without consulting the national board, which is supposed to run SAG.
Don’t believe me? Ask one of the recently FIRED SAG staff members, by White, due to the lack of work, due to ALL the TV pilots going to AFTRA this year ON WHITE’S watch.
These folks aren’t exactly “loyal” to White or Howard or Amy Aquino anymore. Give one of them a jingle. They’ll give you an earful.
Also – 40% of SAG’s P&H comes from TV. Premiums will go UP and benefits DOWN soon if Howard doesn’t get MOST of TV back.
But, when the plan is “weaken SAG to facilitate merger with AFTRA to create a producer-friendly, strike-free union!” that doesn’t really matter, does it?
It is a real shame that 5 years of Alan Rosenberg creating wars with AFTRA, angrily driving producers away from even working with SAG, and threatening strikes at every turn, have still not changed some people’s minds. Ken Howard doesn’t oppose a strike, but that’s been tried for 5 years and that “strike first” mentality in this economy doesn’t work.
Will some of you at some point stop working against your own union? A merger – like all recent corporate mergers – gives us strength in numbers. Even if you don’t support a merger at least support your own President and NED working to get better contracts!
I agree new media is an important issue and Ken absolutely deserves the chance to bargain to get that under control.
Stop the bickering and arguing and backbiting and let’s work together.
SAG is a mess internally.
I have a good friend, who worked there during the last round of negotiations. SAG members, the Guild employees, and the vast majority of the Board do not understand New Media.
Nobody in the New Media department even has a background in New Media (producing, distributing, tech — nothing). However, they were scared enough to almost shut down the entire town without understanding the technical hurdles, PE, or timeline of AMPTP’s New Media rollout.
They trumpeted fear, in an attempt to win a vote, without even knowing the answers to New Media internally. The SAG Board/SAG members need to hire New Media techs from the studios or, at the very least, people with vast amounts of experience in New Media.
SAG members deserve much more educated representation. So do other unions in Los Angeles effected by SAG’s rash, uneducated marches toward a strike.
SAG members should rise up and demand the hiring of qualified representation at the Guild. Hiring is rife with nepotism and we’ve witnessed over the last couple years where that got SAG. My good friend just happened to have a front row seat, listening to the uneducated fear and wild conjecture every day.