AFTRA Delegates Unanimously Re-Elect Roberta Readon President

COMMENTS (10)

• Perfect example of why conventions don’t work. After reading Deadline’s headline regarding the unanimous re-election of Reardon, I called three people I voted for as delegates and one for AFTRA national board seat, to talk to them about the vote. Knowing that these individuals are ( or I thought) actors who don’t necessarily agree with: Reardon’s merger plans, or the fact that Reardon’s getting paid $3,500 per month (members dues money) until merger is completed (will she be obligated to give the money back if merger fails?) or the fact that she’s one of the key players in the strategy of offering cheaper deals to producers in basic cable to steal SAG work, or the fact that she lied when she stated she had no idea who David Browde is and that he runs SagWatch, or the fact that she hasn’t a legitimate acting credit to her name but she claims to know what it’s like to be an actor…. I asked them how in the hell did she get re-elected unanimously. The answer: “Well, it was kind of intimidating. There we were, in this big room, no ballots. All these people clapping… it was too intimidating. So, we just sat in our seats and said nothing. We didn’t want people to get mad at us or out us based on our votes.” First of all, I think people who don’t vote their true convictions due to public pressure or fear, are not true representatives and should not hold board seats. But more importantly, it demonstrated to me how mob rule works in convention style government and should not be tolerated. Had these individuals been allowed to vote via a secret ballot, they would most certainly have voted against Reardons’ re-election. This goes on all the time during conventions. People go to socialize. They go to make connections and network. They go to re-connect with old friends. They go for the free food and drinks. And there’s a whole bunch of drinking that goes on at these conventions. All paid for by AFTRA members. Party after party after party. It’s ONE BIG PARTY. All the real union stuff happens in back rooms, by people not voted in by the general membership. But by convention. It’s a corrupt system. 300 people re-elected Reardon. Matt Kimbrough was re-elected by convention to another term as Treasury but he couldn’t even get elected to an AFTRA board seat when he ran. It’s a complete joke. And unfortunately, if merger passes, the joke will be on SAG actors. Convention will be the form of election and governing if merger passes because that’s the way AFTRA wants it. That’s the only way they keep control. They know it. You know it. Wake up folks. Just read the reports of the convention. Unless you really get smart to what’s going on, that’s SAG’s future.

  Just keep in mind; Roberta Reardon, is being paid $3,500 per month and will continue to be paid until the merger is complete. She’s been receiving payments for several months. Some believe it’ll take another year before there is a complete merger plan. She is being paid $3,500 a month due to the fact that she claims all of her hard work towards merger has negatively impacted her professional work. She’s not being hired due to her dedication to the merger plan. She claimed that she has lost work due to her strong stance on merger, implying that our employers are punishing her for fighting for merger since they’re against any kind of merger between the two unions. (load of crap. Merger is the employers wet dream of all wet dreams). This coming from a “actor” who has no IMDB page. Is there anyone out there who has worked with Reardon on a stage or television set? At least within the last 10 years? Can anyone provide a DVD showing her actually acting? Yet she did not have to provide any proof of lost work or so called black listing. NO PROOF. A small, back-room committee came up with this arbitrary figure of $3,500 per month and the AFTRA national board voted it up. But that vote was not unanimous. The vote was done properly, allowing people to vote their true beliefs. Not like a convention.

  Convention= Mob rule. Mob thought. Mob reaction. Mob in-action.

  Comment by union advocate — Sunday July 24, 2011 @ 12:05pm PDT  Reply to this post

  • Further, what did the esteemed Ms. Reardon do for a living before her AFTRA election a few years ago? If she was making a living as an actress, I never heard of her.

    What’s ironic about Kim Hedgepeth’s statements above is;
    #1) she knows her union facts and seems to support unions and union members, and yet;
    #2) she knows, based on her past performance, how to manipulate both union rules and union members to contort to her (and Reardon’s) way of running things, which is in complete contradiction of union leadership ethics.

    Comment by Ace — Sunday July 24, 2011 @ 4:57pm PDT  Reply to this post

• AFTRA is a corrupt union, and Roberta Reardon is just a grifter and a scam artist. She’d do well to save some of that merger money – she’ll need it to live on when she gets pushed to the side by the big dogs.

  Comment by Hollywood Tarheel — Sunday July 24, 2011 @ 6:40pm PDT  Reply to this post

• Bottom line? SAG membership deserves what it gets. There is a growing case to be made that this merger is going to go down due to institutional corruption tying into the SGAE arrests in Spain. That both SAG and AFTRA having been receiving wires of member’s money from foreign royalty collection that has going on for years, that the money has been due SAG and AFTRA members from the point of collection onward, 100% of it, and this money has been stolen and used essentially as slush funds for both unions.

  Ken Howard, President of SAG, praised, from the dais at last weekend’s meeting, the “brilliant strategy” of Ned Vaughn (SAG VP) and UFS (pro-merger, majority, SAG faction).

  That, has been called a violation of SAG campaign rules, but, what bothers me is no one asked him “what strategy?”

  Because that’s the bigger issue; bigger than violation of campaign rules. Since SAG has been stripped of “all scripted programming for television” it’s rightful jurisdiction, by producers, all given to AFTRA in two short years, crippling SAG financially, what “strategy?”

  Since SAG leadership has refused to file a Unit Certification Claim with the NLRB by vote of the national board to recover that jurisdiction, what “strategy?”

  Since SAG is basically prostrate at this point, with an uninformed membership, ignorant of the issues and apathetic, (just where they want ‘em), poised and ready to vote for merger, due to talking points like “Strength in numbers!” (absurd), and “We can’t be divided!” (dumb. of course we can) – what “strategy,” exactly?

  Here’s what Ken Howard did: he went off the reservation, and told the truth. That was his sin. It was like Bush without a tele-prompter – anything can happen. Ken got all pumped, “I’m playing the President, I FEEL like a President, of something, and I, goddamn it, I am going to give a shout out to some shit, right, fucking NOW!” – and inadvertently blurted out the actual truth: that there has been a “brilliant strategy” that has gotten SAG to the edge of collapse, into a coming merger with the union described above.

  The entire dais visibly blanched when Howard blurted that out, and I think it was not just the possible violation of campaign rules, it was the President of the union copping to “the plan” – to weaken SAG to facilitate merger with AFTRA, overheard verbatim, from a couple top UFS leaders well over two years ago, and, so far, carried out to a T.

  That he, Howard, was the head of a faction, a relatively small faction in fact, that has carried out a systematic, electorally-driven, politicly-motivated strategy, to strip SAG clean financially and via, among other things, a totally invented P&H “earnings split” nightmare for members of SAG and AFTRA that literally didn’t exist until UFS took over.

  Before UFS, SAG had 100% of movies, and 95% of “all scripted programming for television,” its rightful jurisdiction. There was a vastly smaller “earnings split.” The “brilliant strategy” invented by Ned Vaughn and a handful of other UFS leaders, was to “stack the deck” this time around, and make merger happen, by crippling SAG.

  No more fucking around. Give our TV to AFTRA, with the complicit understanding of AFTRA, it is to facilitate merger, and with the financial and structural support, behind the scenes, of the AMPTP themselves. Then, we can’t lose. Fuck “level playing fields.” Fuck, “transparency, honesty, and respect for the great Screen Actors Guild, its storied history and recognition as one of the greatest unions on the planet.”

  That is for pussies, and losers. THIS time, we go Karl Rove on their ass.

  And Ken Howard made the mistake of NOT waiting for the inaugural ball to thank “the architect, Karl Rove” only, in this case, “the architect, Ned Vaughn.” But, too soon. You don’t say that publicly BEFORE you’ve reached your goal.

  I’d like to have heard somebody at the mic immediately say “what brilliant strategy would that be Ken?” before Ned Vaughn or Amy Aquino had the chance to leap across chairs and tackle the guy before he continued to blurt out the truth.

  That is the big story, and of course, now it’s too late. Yet again, the press isn’t asking, nobody is following up, and I’m sure Ken Howard has been bitch-slapped (without him even understanding it was happening) into a sound bite response to cover his gaffe by Ned Vaughn, who found a way to get across to Ken –

  “Ken, you’re our ‘candidate’ our ‘leader’ our ‘public face and voice’ so, when you tell people, in so many words, at a public meeting, on the record, that we have fucked SAG financially, to kill it, to merge with AFTRA, but we haven’t actually merged yet? You jeopardize ‘getting there.’ And if you ever do that again, I just may take my hand from up your ass, and make you talk on your own, and then, where will you be?

  Let me do the thinking, and the strategizing, and the writing, Ken, and you just say what the fuck I tell you to say. Too many people are being paid off to make this happen, and there is a whole lot of illegal shit being pulled to make this work, and if you run your big, fat, mouth like that one more time? Well, then, I just might get mad. And you don’t want to make Ned mad, do you Ken?”

  Comment by WTF? — Sunday July 24, 2011 @ 7:19pm PDT  Reply to this post

• Does anyone know how many SAG members showed up for the SAG meeting last weekend?

  Comment by Simon — Monday July 25, 2011 @ 12:03am PDT  Reply to this post

• Actually made me weep. The really big lies always do.

  Comment by Expres — Monday July 25, 2011 @ 12:34pm PDT  Reply to this post

• The unions own estimate was roughly 260 in attendance. This was the weekend of the closure of 10 miles of the San Diego Freeway. One of the most used freeways in the country. There is also on-going construction and partial closure of a major detour, Coldwater Canyon, which is the cross street of the Sportsmans Lodge, where the meeting took place. In the past SAG would not only send email notifications of membership meetings, but they would also send out reminder postcards considering less than 50% of the membership provide personal email addresses to the Guild. But since the David White/UFS administration, post cards are no longer sent out. Their public stance for the end of hard mail communication is,” We are dedicated to going Green.” But everyone in the “know” knows the truth. SAG/AFTRA staff does not want an informed and involved Hollywood membership for fear of risking losing the merger question. Prior to the current administration, it was typical to get up to 1500 members at open membership meetings when postcards and email announcements were used. Had postcards been sent out, regardless of the freeway closures, there would have been 100s more in attendance. Something SAG, David White, AFTRA and Unite For Strength did not want.

  Comment by union advocate — Monday July 25, 2011 @ 12:36pm PDT  Reply to this post

• I was astonished and deeply saddened to come under criticism by my own supporters for a quote, accurately attributed to me, that appeared in Variety, concerning the SAG-AFTRA merger. I simply stated that this merger was intended, not to make our unions stronger, but rather to ensure that actors never contemplate a job action again. I believe, based on my experience negotiating with AFTRA leadership, that this was not an opinion, but a statement of fact. It’s even worse than that. Given the management conceit called “Pattern Bargaining this merger will further guarantee that the WGA will be forever neutered, even under the brave leadership of Patric Verrone. It is what it is. Death to labor, in Hollywood. What makes me profoundly sad, as I stated before, is the criticism I have apparently faced by people who were my friends. For telling this simple truth. What kind of country are we living in where lies are protected constitutionally, and statements of simple truths are criticized? I would urge people to wake up, before it’s too late, but I fear it’s already too late. The curtain has already fallenScotland, on or once proud Union. Busted by our own illustrious members. And the truth has become obsolete, sacrificed and vilified for the sake of a potential future strategy, which Is already destined to fail.

  Comment by Alan Rosenberg — Thursday July 28, 2011 @ 8:54am PDT  Reply to this post

• The problem is not the seven vertically integrated corporations with whom we negotiate. They play there parts, and they play them extremely well. Props to them and to the late Nick Counter. The problem lies entirely within our two shitbag, so called unions. Football players have learned that when quarterbacks and interior linemen stand together they can, at least achieve a deal they can live with. It’s by no means perfect; ten years is a long time to live with any agreement. But they didn’t bend over, like we did, happily. Solidarity isn’t merely a concept to which you give lip service, while leadership plunges the dagger into the back of the rank and file. I don’t understand how lying to membership about your intentions fails to constitute a breech of fiduciary responsibility, when that mendacity leads to the wholesale loss of contracts and residuals, resulting in such a depletion of resources that we have no alternative but to merge into a big, bloated bureaucracy that will never stand strong again. The goal of the AMPTP is to reduce the workforce to just those performers they deem necessary. That’s what I would do, if I were they. Given no resistance by “Uncle Joe’s Acting Union” or whatever this new entity will be called, there is no doubt they will achieve that goal. Congratulations to them, and shame, shame on us.

  Comment by Alan Rosenberg — Thursday July 28, 2011 @ 3:39pm PDT  Reply to this post

• It is beyond perplexing to contemplate how working class Americans can continually vote against there own self interest, as when they resist National Health Care, thus sewing the seeds of there own destruction. Similarly, why do working and middle class actors so willingly believe the lies they are told, voting for people who have proven they will surrender residuals and jurisdiction in new media.? Don’t they see that the inevitable result of such capitulation is a workforce that will exclude them?

  Comment by Alan Rosenberg — Friday July 29, 2011 @ 3:15am PDT  Reply to this post