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The Screen Actors Guild has extended executive director David White’s contract through 2014, Deadline has confirmed. The extension was not announced. White’s existing contract would have expired in February 2012, but with the proposed merger of SAG with the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists on the agenda next year SAG’s board wanted to maintain continuity in leadership. White has been executive director officially since October 18, 2009. He had been interim exec director since January 26 that year. White previously worked at SAG as general counsel from 2002 through 2006.
SAG Extends David White’s Term Until 2014
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“The extension was not announced.”
Wow. My union’s government is even more sleazy and unaccountable than my nation’s government. How comforting.
we must fight back and get him fired with no money no compensation.
This again from the group that pledges transparnecy. NOT!
I’ve seen recent internet postings about David White’s former business partner stealing millions from SAG’s pension fund. Is this true? Can anybody please clarify what that is about?
No, David White’s former business partner was hired as a *cough-independent-cough* investigator to “investigate” the guy who stole millions from the SAG pension, which has now sorta been paid back (by some insurance company). Not that anyone was indicted or anything like that. And not that there’s anything wrong with hiring an old crony to pose as an independent investigator when other friends might be indicted. That’s truly what “independent investigation” means. Nope, nothing wrong with that at all.
/sarcasm
Deadline Team: Please find out if White will share the National Executive director position with AFTRA’s NED Hedgepeth or will it just be White if merger passes. Since his contract expires in 2014 and all of the U4S merger zombies want this merger done pronto, will the new union have two national executive directors making over $450K a year? Will members dues be increased to keep up with the salaries of the combined/bloated staff? Since SAG already represents 44,000 of AFTRA’s 70,000 membership, that means there are roughly only 26,000 more members. Why the need for 2 almost half million dollar a year execs? Didn’t Prez Howard promise a lean and mean, cost effective new union? Before I vote, I’d like to know the size of staff of the new union and at what cost. I’m sorry for staff, but they better let a ton go in order to save money and be more effective and proficient if that is the goal. Lean and mean. “Easy to work with, hard to fight.” And why are SAG members finding out so late about White’s contract extension. We’re paying his salary. Why so late with the announcement? Like the previous posted stated, where’s the transparency. At least U4S is consistent with their phoniness. Secrets, secrets secrets.
I just received that lame letter from SAG’s P&H. What a white wash. And I now have more questions and concerns than ever before. Hollywood Reporter released the name of the former staff person who stole millions. Karimi. Has he been prosecuted? That’s a ton of members dough to be stolen. What did he do with the money? Where is he now? Only Nikki and her staff can figure this one out. Please look into this, Especially before SAG members are asked to vote on merger. Because I smell a rat and White’s finger prints are all over everything. Including this push/rush to merging with AFTRA.
HERE WE HAVE IT FOLKS…
Like Night of the Living Callback, MergerSmashFirsters are b-a-c-k to throw lye on their poop in the creaky old outhouse called Merger Phobia.
Nearly every working actor in Hollywood knows that merger is the only solution to splitting contributions between SAG’s & AFTRA’s health plans which denies so many of us the health coverage we deserve. A merger will allow the creation of a third pension entity plus continued vesting in the existing plans and will solve the working actor’s need for medical & pension credits for all union work performed.
The anti-merger comments in this comment stream come from a disenfranchised group of actors – formerly known as membershipfirst – who feel that they are somehow different from their SAG & AFTRA brothers & sisters who work for broadcast entities which are owned by the SAME conglomerates that own the movie studios (Viacom, Disney, Warners ALL own TV stations & networks AND movie studios.) Whether you are a broadcaster or an actor, you have the SAME BOSSES.
The kind of anti-merger sentiment exhibited in this comment stream is propelled by the logic that has produced a Michelle Bachman and a Rick Perry for the Republicans.
Merger-phobia is a symptom of what too many ill-informed American voters do – vote against their own self-interest (e.g. middle-class teapartiers against Obama-care. Who needs healthcare when you have G_d on your side?)
MergerSmashFirst was voted off the SAG Board two years ago after a few wearisome years of odd behavior including suing their own union repeatedly. Thankfully they’ve been largely kept off the AFTRA board because of the strange logic: “We aren’t broadcasters.”
Right, you’re not a broadcaster if you’re an actor, and nurses aren’t truck drivers, but both benefit from membership in the Teamsters.
Middle-class actors are pro-merger by a whopping majority.
With SAG & AFTRA blended into our new merged union we look forward to more power at the negotiating table and a health & pension plan that credits us for work under ALL of our union contracts.
Just stop it, okay Tom?
Nothing in the original story nor any one thing in any of the comments has anything at all to do with the proposed “merger”. This faux argument you keep hyping in every SAG story is getting tiresome.
SAG members are disillusioned with and angry at SAG leadership. And for (many) good reason(s). We have questions and we deserve honest answers, and we want to hold our SAG board accountable for their decisions, claims and the steering of this ship, and they should be willing and proud to do so. So far, while U4S has been in power, these things have not happened.
But since you brought it up… I don’t know any fellow union actor who thinks actors’ needs are better served with two unions. So the issue isn’t that actors don’t want to be under the same leadership and representation, it’s that SAG members have a real distaste in our mouths for AFTRA – again, for good reason. Further, AFTRA is being forced down our throats by a SAG board that has not only consistently kowtowed to AFTRA (our nemesis, competitor and a conflict of interest for those SAG board members) and the AMPTP, but by AFTRA card-holders who are also part of the powerful SAG leadership in NY and who helped dismantle and weaken SAG from the inside as an end to their (your?) means.
We’ll see what will be in January/February of 2012, when the combined board(s) make their play for “merger” (which won’t be a merger per se, but I digress…) and how they’ll answer and/or debate with members who aren’t fooled so easily.
Peace to you, and to all in this industry in 2012.
As a correction, I will concede that Union Advocate did bring up the SAG P&H discussion first. I don’t remember reading that part of his(?) post.
Still, my comment stands.
Stargazer, yours is a disingenuous retort. If the above “threat” of having both AFTRA’s & SAG’s NEDs at the helm, draining the coffers of the new union, isn’t anti-merger slough, then the moon is made of gouda.
Your characterization of AFTRA being “forced down” throats is thinly veiled and aging membershipfirst tripe, a total mischaracterization, and flat paranoid. I am proud to belong to both SAG & AFTRA which provide me protection and contracts in all areas of performance work.
Working performers belong to both unions, and both SAG and AFTRA have afforded members protection and coverage and pay that have come from hard-won union organizing of film, TV and new media by both unions. To characterize as you do is way off the mark. Membershipfirst union-vs-union thinking has been voted out.
(I sometimes wonder if the anti-merger tripe you see in this and other DHD comment streams is sponsored by the studios’ legal departments. It smacks of anti-unionism.)
P.S. This isn’t Tom. You’ve got tens of thousands of pro-merger performer/colleagues around you. And I’m certainly one of them.
D,
I would say I appreciate that your new comment is well written and concise – but only to a point. Your first paragraph: pure hyperbole. Beyond that, calling union members’ valid and unanswered concerns “tripe” (along with your positive assessment of AFTRA) simply shows your lack of understanding of unions. It’s also why you sound like Tom when you write.
Nobody that I know of is “anti-merger”. That is, all of us agree that all actors should be represented by one union/guild. Our hesitation is joining in cahoots with AFTRA, a known producer-friendly guild, whose business tactics and true member support leave much to be desired. And AFTRA is running SAG right now. The sales job on the SAG membership from the board is a concerted effort to force this “merger” on us, saying that it’s necessary to merge with AFTRA. Simply put, a lot of us don’t agree that that’s our only option. And until there’s an open communication and public debate on the pros and cons, that sales job will feel more like a used car sales job.
Remember, “Sign the contract and go back to work immediately”? Yeah. Like that.
We’re not “anti-merger” – we have concerns and questions, and those concerns and questions will be answered before this referendum is voted upon. And if the SAG leadership refuses to address these concerns, then they’re obviously hiding something.
But if the combined committees from both unions can come up with a great plan that doesn’t screw actors, including a workable pension structure where nobody gets screwed, then I’m in. I want to be optimistic that this can happen, but knowing AFTRA I seriously doubt it.
Stargazer:
There is a name for your chronic political condition: AFTRA-phobia. The only other symptom I can liken it to is pointless name-calling.
If you are a working performer you know that you earn under AFTRA contracts the same money dollar-for-dollar as you do under SAG – e.g., Day-Player, Industrial, Commercial, Animation, Interactive/Games, etc. (That’s the binding result of Phase One bargaining.) And radio and soaps pay pretty well too (AFTRA contracts only.)
As a working SAG & AFTRA member I’m damned glad both of my unions have done what they’ve done in the past and in the present about organizing and ratifying contracts I can earn under in their assorted areas of jurisdiction, overlaps notwithstanding.
You give yourself away with your remark: “…all of us agree that all actors should be represented by one union/guild. Our hesitation is joining in cahoots with AFTRA, a known producer-friendly guild…”
You and I both know that AFTRA faces the same employers across the table as SAG (Fox, Disney, Viacom, etc.) You think AFTRA does something different from SAG…? Yes they do, they represent broadcasters. And THAT is objectionable? If so, then, sir (or miss) I’d say you’re irrationally AFTRA-phobic. (One union worker stands before a camera and recites lines from a narrative script. Another union worker sits before a camera and reads lines from a fact-based news script…THAT’s your basis for hating broadcasters & AFTRA…?)
The IA has had a troublesome history, the Teamsters too, but AFTRA? Name one scandal or instance of malfeasance in the history of that union and I’ll buy you a surf’n'turf at the Rennaissance.
AFTRA-phobia afflicts a small underemployed minority of SAG actors (and yes, the few celebs like Ed Asner & Ed Harris who are trotted out for the occasional AFTRA-phobic vote e.g., the anti-AFTRA Exhibit A campaign which was an ill-advised, destructive, and failed political spasm that served only to empower our employers who lick their chops every time AFTRA-phobia surfaces.)
The longer we dally in ignorance and bitch-slap our sister union whose contracts are a mirror image of SAG’s and whose membership is numerically near-identical, the more effectively we blindly serve our greedy employer/masters.
Employers didn’t choose AFTRA over SAG because of favorable financials. The money is identical, and you know that. Employers chose AFTRA because membershipfirst caused such instability and counterproductive intransigence within the SAG Board room that it was impossible for contracts to be signed or actors to work. (Membership first operatives torpedoed the SAG agency franchise agreement putting tens of thousands of young actors at risk of exploitation by agents and their General Service Agreements. And there’s STILL no SAG agency franchise agreement.)
And your remark, “…SAG leadership refuses to address…obviously hiding something…?” This is just plain weird and paranoid….as if you were talking about a cabal of fascists. These are your colleagues you work with on movie & TV sets – democratically elected union leaders – working volunteer actors. I haven’t found them unresponsive nor closeted away somewhere in a smoke-filled room.
It’s your posture and positioning that gives you away, S.
The windy utterings of an AFTRA-phobic are a bit like what New Yorkers used to say about Los Angeles, “You go out there and get work, and the damned sunshine will lower your IQ.” (Ever have a rational conversation about L.A. with a died-in-the-wool New Yorker a few decades ago…? Not possible.) This is what your AFTRA-phobia sounds like to me.
I wish I could end this missive on a light-hearted note to you, S., but union-busting and disinformation are hardly funny. Unless you find the poor players strutting around Iowa this week funny.
D, you fail (intentionally?) to mention that AFTRA also has their “front of the book” (Network Television Code) rates, which are much lower than both SAG and the AFTRA Exhibit A rates. And a good portion of AFTRA is not only on those cheaper contracts, but even lower rates still exist for many shows under the “CW Supplement” contract, which should no longer even exist but AFTRA negotiators don’t fight it.
I don’t know what you call “scandal” or “malfeasance” but when AFTRA broke from SAG at the negotiating table, after SAG carried AFTRA 50/50 at that table (even though AFTRA represented less than 35% of the work) for… well forever, they needed an excuse. So they fabricated a BS story that SAG had attempted to steal an AFTRA show – a lie that has been completely vetted by the parties involved. To buttress the passing of the sh___ contract (which SAG refused to agree on), Ms. Reardon lobbied her non-actor broadcasters to make sure they vote ‘yes’, no matter that the contract was egregious to actors. Further, by accepting that sh___ contract, AFTRA put their “sister union” in a horrible position in a race to the bottom, which is pretty much where we are now – though nobody knows what might happen in new negotiations with a new union. It doesn’t look good.
It was AFTRA that began competing with SAG, not the other way around. Producers went with AFTRA on new shows because they KNEW that AFTRA wouldn’t strike – which is the worst thing about AFTRA. Don’t go thinking that I want a strike – nobody does. But without that piece of paper (a strike authorization) at the negotiating table, a union is a paper tiger.
The only reason pay rates and conditions are even near similar is because SAG had to accept what AFTRA already had. THIS is the predicament AFTRA put us in.
“Union busting”? Please. You want “anti-union”? How about union members agreeing to give away fellow members’ royalties and residuals in selfish fear for themselves? “I don’t care, I just wanna work!” It happened. I don’t care if it’s ten lousy bucks, it’s not our money to be giving away. And our SAG contract negotiators and board not only agreed to it in the first place, but they recommended we ratify it. I fear that the “merger” will see this phenomenon again – where union members will vote ‘yes’ on an agreement which will screw fellow members out of earned pension status (at some level). Again, the pension issue remains to be hammered out and I truly hope that the committees will find a way to make sure that nobody loses. But again, I doubt it.
You’re putting a lot of words in my mouth, not to mention building bluster and more hyperbole out of thin air. I’m not calling anyone names and I’m not hating at all. My “posture and positioning” is of caution, and my views on AFTRA are such from their well-documented shortcomings.
This information is exactly what you, and most pro-merger people (including the SAG board) don’t want to talk about. But anyone who cares to ask questions and look at the facts will find these things.
Funny how the AFTRA supporters conveniently forget how AFTRA sold-out actors in made-for-basic cable – By using the SAG contract as a template but giving away the residuals. Anyone supporting AFTRA’s actions can not be a working actor. Working actors were (and ARE) being screwed by AFTRA every day. Even when an actor works on a network show, their benefits are compromised by the inferior AFTRA H&R Plan.
D, I forgot to deal with this statement: “You and I both know that AFTRA faces the same employers across the table as SAG … You think AFTRA does something different from SAG…? Yes they do, they represent broadcasters. And THAT is objectionable? … (One union worker stands before a camera and recites lines from a narrative script. Another union worker sits before a camera and reads lines from a fact-based news script…THAT’s your basis for hating broadcasters & AFTRA…?)”
First, I don’t hate broadcasters, nor AFTRA, nor anyone else. Why would I be objectionable that radio and newspeople are represented by AFTRA? That broadcasters (and DJs, and meteorologists, and…) vote on actors’ contracts, which differ greatly from their own (residual income scale vs. well-paid up front) is the problem. To your example: one union member’s employer (producer) uses that actor’s work over and over to make more profit, while the other union member is well-paid only once because producer’s won’t use that union member’s work to profit in the future. And that’s the big difference. Why would broadcasters fight for an actor’s right to residual payments when they have no dog in that hunt? The answer is they won’t, and they proved that when the new crappy contract was ratified a few years ago. And Ms. Reardon wants to keep it that way.
Second, yes AFTRA does (or did, at least) something different than SAG @ the negotiating table – they capitulate. And I’m not exaggerating that point. Unfortunately, this is now the business model for “negotiating” actors’ contracts because SAG has been weakened to such a degree and must compete with AFTRA for the crumbs that the AMPTP offers. (Not that SAG negotiators – really, AFTRA sympathizers – are competing at all…)
As to what “Ben” said above, all true. AFTRA has systematically allowed producers to use union talent at stupidly-reduced rates and without residuals, forcing SAG to do the same. It’s appalling.
When does David Young’s contract with the WGA end? That’s the real joke in Hollywood.
S’gazer:
If what you say is true, then why are most of Hollywood’s big earners AND middle-class scale actors in favor of merger with AFTRA. Are we, the majority of Hollywood Division SAG actors, really that stupid and conniving – cloaking hidden motives ‘neath our skirts?
They, “…don’t want to talk about it…?” What you believe about the reasoning of pro-merger actors is bizarre.
We’re all aware of AFTRA’s Front of the Book, and CW codes for BASIC CABLE PROGRAMS THAT ARE WATCHED BY A MINISCULE PORTION of the viewing audience – unlike on broadcast TV (e.g., CSI) where audiences are often ten times that of basic cable.
Do you see me caterwauling and condemning SAG about SAG’s Ultra-Low Budget $100 a day film rate for actors? No, because it makes sense. Just as AFTRA’s graduated-scale contracts in cable make sense. They both exist for the same reason.
I asked an actor in ’98, “Are you voting for merger?”
“No,” she said with a look of dim confusion and surprise on her face.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because we are actors.”
“So?”
“Well…no one knows what’s good for actors but actors.”
H-m-m-m-m.
S’gazer, are you and your mergersmashfirst operatives really THAT special? I don’t think so.
We’re union workers no more special than session musicians, gaffers, or puppeteers. When you can grow up and realize that, maybe you’ll give up your ill-conceived obsession with AFTRA’s perceived crimes against the acting community.
Yours is a transparent and failed argument against merging with AFTRA.
Hollywood’s “big earners” are above the line and they have no dog in this hunt, save for keeping the gravy train rolling along (and you’re disingenuous for suggesting otherwise). Most of them are “producers” as well, so SAG merging with a weaker union suits them from that standpoint. (I give you Tom Hanks, ladies and gentlemen.)
Most everybody else wants a merger (as I said above) because of splitting P&H benefits so that we can’t get vested in either. All I’ve ever said is that actors want all actors to be under one guild, that AFTRA has done some pretty shady things in the past, and that AFTRA is and has been running SAG into the ground to force a merger – and to save itself, which it has. I don’t think you can argue with any of those statements. But since our leadership is telling everyone that AFTRA is our only option, yes, a merger will probably pass (or something like a merger. And we’ll all see what they come up with very soon.
There you go again with “membersmashfirst”. Makes you sound like a fifth-grader. Or Tom Ligon.
You asked for an AFTRA scandal, I gave you one – two, actually – and they’re both pretty major. But no, you still purport any misdeeds by AFTRA to be my conspiracy theories. It’s all there in print, pal. Whether or not you think AFTRA is a huge reason that SAG is in the predicament it is, well that’s your (honest?) opinion. So you can continue to support AFTRA; cherry-pick your pros, and either deny or completely disregard the cons, but AFTRA has the reputation it deserves.
I have to say it’s been a lively discussion, D., and I think we’ve both posted our opinions and beliefs ad nauseum. I think it’s very important for all union/guild actors to have ALL of the facts before taking this non-reversible step. I do hope for the best for all actors, including you.
Star’g,
My only comment is that your characterization: “…AFTRA is and has been running SAG into the ground to force a merger…” is fancifully odd in light of the fact that AFTRA is 70,000 members – a smaller union composed of a Heinz 57 breed of mutts: broadcasters, actors, game show hosts, puppeteers, narrators, sportscasters, dancers, and session singers, and SAG is 120,000 well-organized actors who totally dominate in Commercials, Prime Time TV, and Motion Pictures. Now, how on earth can AFTRA “run SAG into the ground??!!??”
Weird characterization, friend. Weird.
SAG has done what it’s done under pressure from warring factions up until the last two years when Unite For Strength has thankfully cleaned house so the Hollywood Board can at least function and perform its constitutional duties rather than resemble a Munich beer hall Putsch.
And again, the “crimes” you cling to like a grieving widow of the McCoys (who do continue to hate the Hatfields) are AFTRA’s sliding scale cable TV contracts – the AFTRA parallel to SAG’s sliding scale film acting contracts (Ultra-Low Budget, etc.) Less than day player on CSI? Of course, but union money nonetheless.
Color me koo-koo, but I see the sense in what both AFTRA and SAG have done here – created contracts for TV programs & films with a fragmented audience where actors can earn union coverage.
You see it as the Great Train Robbery.
Go figure.