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Statement from AFTRA today:
“In order to advance the interests of all performers, out of concern for the health of the entertainment industry, and in the spirit of union solidarity, AFTRA has decided to commence negotiations with the AMPTP on April 28.
AFTRA is committed above all to improving and protecting the working lives of AFTRA performers, and in this spirit we have been focused on moving forward to negotiate the best possible contract for our members as soon as possible. Our issues with the leadership of the Screen Actors Guild are a matter of record, as is our decision to negotiate a primetime television agreement on our own this year. Nonetheless we are also concerned about the well-being of SAG members – some 44,000 of whom also belong to AFTRA.
“The SAG leadership has now reversed its previous approach of postponing contract talks until the last minute—and last night publicly announced that they intend to start talks with the AMPTP on April 15. AFTRA has decided to let SAG go first because we feel it is in all of our interests for SAG to maintain its momentum and because we want to give the guild a reasonable opportunity to meet with the AMPTP. In our view, our proposed schedule should allow SAG sufficient time to work out a good deal with the studios. At the same time, we cannot abdicate our responsibility to our own members to engage with the employers in a strong, deliberate, and timely manner so we can negotiate the best possible agreement for primetime performers.”
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Do you think if I say “This is going to go well” over and over again really loudly, I can make it be true?
Better get ready. And pray.
” Plus, we’d like to coast on their tail and get a better deal. We know if we lead the way, we’ll drop the ball and even we will suffer. So let SAG do all the work and we’ll take their deal. ”
At least they have the common sense to back off. But AFTRA, my little ballot is in the mail and I hope to see more SAG sense on that board.
Thank you to Frances Fisher and the entire slate of AFTRA ARTISTS for bringing up the issues most important to dual card holders. And to be willing to fight for them.
Peggy Lane O’Rourke
Implicit in the second paragraph of AFTRA’s statement is an effort on AFTRA’s part to hurry SAG to make a deal.
There is no hurry. The primetime television and theatrical contracts don’t expire until June 30. Hurrying a deal works only to the benefit of the AMPTP. In a negotiation, it must be taken into consideration that if it will gain one side or the other a strategic advantage, they’ll be perfectly happy to drag their feet. The AMPTP did just this in their negotiations with the WGA. They dragged their feet for MONTHS, then when someone woke up and noticed the Academy Awards were in jeopardy, suddenly it was hurry up and make a deal. Nobody should be fooled by efforts to use time or timing as a manipulative tool.
It is also important to note that if serious negotiation is ongoing, and the union’s negotiators think it might be counterproductive, there is no set-in-stone rule that a strike must be called the minute the clock strikes midnight July 1. The option of authorizing and calling a strike rests at the sole discretion of the union, be it SAG, AFTRA, or the two actors’ unions working in solidarity.
AFTRA would be well-advised to hang back and not do any serious negotiating until SAG has a deal. The two unions worked together on the negotiating positions, so if the AMPTP isn’t meeting SAG’s needs, it stands to reason that it certainly wouldn’t be meeting AFTRA’s. Another advantage to this approach is that the AMPTP will have less of an opportunity to play the two actors’ unions against each other at the bargaining tables. If the AMPTP decides to play brinksmanship, IOW if it offers a rotten deal and dares SAG to strike, AFTRA should be right there with SAG authorizing their members to strike too.
Also, by not taking a deal first, AFTRA avoids being in the potentially embarrassing situation of having to explain to their members why they didn’t hold out and get the better deal like their sister union.
——
All of that of course is what AFTRA absolutely SHOULD do, if their first priority is their membership. If, on the other hand, their first priority is strengthening their institution to the detriment of their members’ benefits and working conditions, look for AFTRA to cut a sweetheart deal with the AMPTP first and do everything they can to steer more productions to their contract that offers actors lower wages, give-backs on residuals (ask the principal talent over at Dirt and Damages about that one), flimsy provisions concerning product integration, extended free streaming over the Internet, lower contributions to health & pension, and possibly even other giveaways. Also watch for the very serious possibility that AFTRA will start trying to poach digital theatrical work in Los Angeles and other markets as they may well be starting to do in New York.
My definition of “poach” in this context is simple. SAG has 100% of the unionized theatrical work. IMHO, ANY theatrical production (and I don’t care if it’s shot on film, digital tape, high-capacity static memory chips, a mini-DVD disk, VHS, webcam, or bank of 6-year-olds scrawling away feverishly on construction paper with thick crayons) authorized under AFTRA violates SAG’s Global Rule 1 and places any SAG actor participating in such a production in danger of losing their SAG rights and privileges. The same thing, IMHO, applies to any production shot for the Internet and later repurposed for theatrical exhibition and/or distribution. Given the nature of the digital medium as a performance capture and exhibition technology, this is a very real possibility.
So, SAG negotiating on April 15th wasn’t a April Fools Joke?
There is tremendous pressure for SAG to make a deal. I heard yesterday through my Sony source that movies can not get insurance companies to bond them if production isn’t going to be completed by June. This is because of the looming possible actor’s strike.
Wall Street is listening as well, entertainment industry stocks will be gravely effected if another strike happens in Hollywood.
I hate to say this but AFTRA may be doing SAG a favor by pressuring them to make a deal before more pre-productions are halted.
RATS!
SAG/AFRTA member since 1981
Does it matter that SAG goes first? The WGA began negotiations before the DGA, and the AMPTP simply threw a couple of hissy fits and went home until the union it thought it could use came to the table.
bluestocking, it doesn’t matter if SAG goes first with the AMPTP, however the WGA learned the hard way when they mistakenly took DVD off the table before the strike. This as a good faith gesture after the AMPTP requested the WGA to make nice and them some love. The AMPTP showed their love back by demanding more be taken off the table.
Doug Allen should not fall for this trick. AFTRA will in a heart beat. This is what will cripple SAG. Once AFTRA start taking things off the table, SAG won’t be able to put them back on unless they are willing to strike.
Nobody wants a strike. But, now that learn SAG and AFTRA are in a war of encroachment against each other this is playing into the AMPTP’s hand. They will crucify each other and we just walk in and pick from the dead body parts.
My short term solution to this mess would be for all 40 thousand AFTRA/SAG joint members to demand that all voting on a new AFTRA contract will only happen simultaneously with a SAG new contract membership vote.
This can happen if all actors begin to work together to not allow their union leaders to undercut each other’s bargaining position like they have done last weekend.
WGA/SAG/AFTRA member
This SAGWATCH exclusive has been pieced together from multiple accounts of those who were actually in the rooms.
It is a story of friendship, of ignorance, of betrayal, and, ultimately, disaster. And it started literally in the backyard.
Membership First’s Bonnie Bartlett hasn’t told us whether she sought out her neighbor, Susan Flannery of the Bold & Beautiful, but Flannery, the star of the long running show, had made no secret of her belief that she and her cast are due foreign residuals. The cast had taken the claim to AFTRA, which represents the actors on B&B, where it was researched, but the union had agreed with the employers that the show had not yet exceeded the contractual cap after which foreign residual payments would be distributed to the cast.
Flannery didn’t like that response, and complained to Bartlett about it, and, as well, about the fact that SAG LA actors get less expensive health insurance than AFTRA actors. Bartlett agreed that SAG insurance, particularly in LA, is better. In fact, Bartlett pointed out, the LA SAG insurance is far better than that provided to anyone else in SAG.
Bartlett, who also has done some soap work, sensed an opportunity. Atop her sympathy, she went even further. Wouldn’t it would be great, asked Bartlett, if all actors were in one union?
What Flannery didn’t know, as she quickly agreed that yes, it would be better if all actors were in one union, was that Bartlett was part of the group within SAG that had blocked merger of SAG and AFTRA, and, what she also didn’t know, was that she was about to get rolled. Bartlett suggested to Flannery that the B&B cast could simply “switch” the Bold & Beautiful’s AFTRA contract for an identical SAG contract. The word “decertify” was never used – it was all about “seamlessly switching” to SAG.
All the cast would have to do, Bartlett said, would be to sign a confidential petition, and the contract could simply be “switched” to SAG. The key, Bartlett said, would be to make this a completely secret move, and not let anyone at AFTRA know until it was a done deal.
Two copies of the petition were prepared. Flannery, who is the doyenne of B&B, quickly spread the word that the full cast should sign the petition, and the cast was told not to speak to anyone from AFTRA, not even the set representative.
No electronic copies were to be made. No one was to send e-mail about it. It had to be a complete secret. The secrecy held, even as Bartlett arranged for Flannery to meet with SAG NED Doug Allen, for a session that lasted some two hours.
Allen now says that in the two hour session he only told Flannery and others from B&B to talk to AFTRA, a claim AFTRA reps say shows precisely why they don’t trust him. “Would telling them ‘Go see AFTRA’ take two hours?” one pointedly asked.
In any event, Flannery did not go to see AFTRA. The petition continued to circulate, as did the insistence on secrecy. But, fortunately for the cast, someone got concerned, and reached out for assistance.
Fortunately? Yes, because apparently Bartlett, Alan Rosenberg, Doug Allen and the rest of the crack SAG Legal team forgot to tell Flannery and the rest of the B&B cast that you can’t just “switch” unions. Shockingly, it seems they didn’t even know.
Not until after AFTRA’s now well known explosion over this and other raiding efforts by Membership First did the leaders of SAG discover that the NLRB has one set of rules about decertifications (minimum, one year between decertification and holding an election to bring in another union) and the AFL-CIO has another – called Rule 20, under which the minimum time between decertifying one member union and bringing in another is two years, and the maximum can be five. We’re told that it took a senior AFL-CIO exec repeating himself in a heated conversation with Allen to hammer home that, and several other related points.
Of course, no one had explained to the B&B cast that in that one-to-five year period after a decertification, the cast would have no union contract, no union protections, no severance, no residuals and earn neither pension credits nor health insurance, unless CBS took pity on them. Ooops. No one had even bothered to point out that there were limits on when a decertification petition could be prepared, and that those limits had been violated. Double ooops.
Then someone pointed out one other not so small problem. Bonnie Bartlett was part of the last Membership First attempt to pack the AFTRA Board with its supporters. She was one of the two Membership First supporters elected to the AFTRA Board of Directors, and is currently a member of hte AFTRA Board. That meant Bartlett actually had a fiduciary duty to AFTRA, even as she was working to raid it. Uh oh. It was emergency damage control time at 5757.
Thus the official SAG statements about never wanting to represent soap operas, quickly contradicted by other Membership First directors, who are still pushing ahead, trying to justify and finish the B&B raid and others like it. And, of course, someone had to decide whether to try to calm down AFTRA, or, instead, to put AFTRA into a position where their walking away from joint negotiations was the only possible outcome.
The AFL-CIO was heavily involved again, its senior staff urging Allen and President Alan Rosenberg to sign a no-raiding pact. That was what AFTRA was demanding. Allen refused, but the two did agree to meet with AFTRA’s elected leadership, in what would be a final and critical session. Would there be conciliation? The answer came quickly.
One SAG insider quoted Allen as telling senior AFTRA leaders, “SAG represents dancers. Why can’t we have Dancing with the Stars?” Kent McCord was quoted as asking, “Where’s my SAG radio contract?”
Boom went the dynamite. Phase One, already teetering on the abyss, was blown apart.
The rest isn’t history…yet…but is now the rather unpleasant days of our lives.
Well if what Anonymous said @ 11:40 is true… then all the pro-SAG posts can stop with the whole “what’s best for actors” line because clearly SAG didn’t have the actors best interest in mind when they were willing to let a group of actors go without any representation just to stick it to the other union.
In fact if 75% of the post is true, I can’t see how any actor can trust the motives of SAG’s current leadership. (That being said clearly the leadership groups of both unions are playing politics – that’s how you stay in power – the actors are secondary)
Expect a lot of actors and friends of actors to show the guild some love at the Hollywood to the Docks rally April 15, the same day Doug Allen sits down with Nick Counter. http://www.hollywoodtothedocks.org
Re: the anonymous SAGWATCH post about B&B:
There’s journalism and then there’s rumormongering. The fact this post was anonymous means nobody’s willing to stand behind it, which puts it in the latter category. If the person who posted this is so sure of their facts, feed the info to Nikki. Let her do her journalism thing, checking sources, verifying facts, so on.
Unless and until that happens, nothing asserted in the anonymous post above about SAG and the B&B situation holds any water whatsoever.