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See So What Do SAG Election Results Mean? for analysis and official statements.
Los Angeles (September 18) — Screen Actors Guild today announced election results for the Guild’s national board of directors. Twenty-three of the 69 national board seats were open for election this year, representing Screen Actors Guild’s Hollywood, New York and Regional Branch Divisions. The newly elected national board members will assume office on September 25.
SAG’s Hollywood Division elected 11 new national board members; the New York Division elected five members; and seven national board members were elected from the union’s branches in Boston, Dallas/Fort Worth, Detroit, Houston, Nashville, Nevada, and Washington D.C./Baltimore.
Board members elected from the Hollywood Division:Amy Brenneman, Adam Arkin, JoBeth Williams, Scott Bakula, Ken Howard, Lainie Kazan, Kate Walsh, Keith Carradine, Joely Fisher, Morgan Fairchild and Pamela Reed (all three-year terms.)
Joe Bologna, Marcia Wallace, Dule Hill, Doug Savant, Clancy Brown, Gabrielle Carteris, Clyde Kusatsu, L. Scott Caldwell, Ashley Crow, Ned Vaughn, Richard Speight, Jr., Alan Ruck, Stacey Travis, Jane Austin, France Nuyen, Anthony DeSantis, Eugene Boggs, Tim DeKay, Bill Smitrovich, Charles Shaughnessy, Assaf Cohen, and Yale Summers were elected to serve as national board alternates and to the Hollywood division board of directors (all one-year terms).
Board members elected from the New York Division:
Sam Robards, Rebecca Damon, Matt Servitto, Traci Godfrey, Mark Blum. (all three-year terms).
Jack Landròn, Eric Bogosian, Ralph Byers, Joe Narciso, John Rothman, Jay Potter, Kevin Scullin, Marc Baron, and Manny Alfaro were elected to serve as national board alternates and to the New York Division board of directors (all one-year terms.)
Board members elected from the Regional Branch Division:
Bill Mootos (Boston – three-year term), Suzanne Burkhead (Dallas/Fort Worth – three-year term), Ed Kelly (Detroit – three-year term), James Huston (Houston – three-year term), Cece DuBois (Nashville – three-year term), Art Lynch (Nevada – three-year term), Stephen F. Schmidt (Washington D.C./Baltimore– three-year term).
SAG President Alan Rosenberg stated, “I congratulate those members newly elected to our board of directors and I look forward to working closely with each of them. Now it’s time to work in tandem on behalf of SAG members throughout the country, to get a fair contract we can all be proud of. A union divided benefits only the employers and SAG members deserve nothing less than unified, focused leadership.”
Ballots for all eligible SAG members in Hollywood and New York were mailed on August 19 with a September 18 return deadline. Ballots were tabulated today at SAG headquarters by the independent election company, Integrity Voting Systems. A total of 13,793 ballots were tabulated in the Hollywood Division (representing 24.84 percent of ballots mailed in the Hollywood Division) and 5,458 ballots were tabulated in the New York Division (representing 23.76 percent of ballots mailed in the New York Division). The number of ballots returned in the Regional Branch elections varied by region.
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So what does this mean exactly? Nice victory for U4S? Will MF claim victory as well? What will the AMPTP say about the results? I guess since this is the comment section, I’m allowed a comment. I yield to you.
My response to seeing names like Amy Brennerman and Kate Walsh being elected is to go ficore.
This union has just been gutted.
I assume everyone wants to know which slate won – the Unite For Strength candidates are listed below:
Board(all 3 year terms):
Amy Brenneman, Adam Arkin, Ken Howard, Kate Walsh, Pamela Reed
UFS endorsed Morgan Fairchild but she wasn’t technically on the slate
Alternates (all 1 year terms):
Marcia Wallace, Dule Hill, Doug Savant, Gabrielle Carteris, Clyde Kusatsu, L. Scott Caldwell, Ashley Crow, Ned Vaughn, Richard Speight, Jr., Stacey Travis, Tim DeKay, Bill Smitrovich, Assaf Cohen
Hello qualified voting!
U4S – 18, MF – 14. Now let’s see where this goes….
Looks like UFS won the Hollywood Election 5 – 5 – 1, with the independent on their side….
Nikki,
I don’t have the mailers sent out by ” membership first” and ” unite for strength” in front of me, but I am curious if the election changed the balance of power in SAG. I recognized a lot of the celebrity U4S names in your post which as a working actor freaks me out. Having actors run anything is loony but having a “reform” group come in with big promises and no experience in the middle of a fight for my childrens financial future scares the residuals out of me.
Has anyone ever considered changing the system and getting rid of most of the actors in general. Have the majority be people with policy and business experience. Most actors I know have never taken a business class, policy class, admin class, or a political history class and a few more lawyers wouldn’t hurt ( who do you think is sitting on the AMPTP side of the table? A bunch of people with certificates from a Leslie Kahn’s actors intensive? Try a bunch of people with JD’s and actually think “the secret” is really a trick on dumb people) . Just because you’ve worked under a contract does not generally make one qualified to judge or design one. With that said, I commened thoes who sacrafice the time and effort and recognize thoes that are really good at what their doing. Sure it will cost a lot but imagine the gains we could pick up with people who really fight for a living.
As I wrote this I realized that in the long run we’re fucked no matter who won. As much as I hate the guy, we could use a Karl Rove right about now. Pot smoking emoters shouldn’t be negotiating anything. Hell we don’t even negotiate our own personal contracts but we are qualified to negotiate for the entire cadre of professional actors. Damn damn damn. Until we pull our heads out of our collective asses, support Doug A and Allen R. Both are good, honest guys and feel deeply about the fight and will deliver.
I don’t understand why anyone would support the idea of qualified voting. It seems pretty simple that, if SAG/AFTRA take your dues money then you should get a vote, because everything that happens in the business still affects what happens to your career. In the years that you don’t earn any money does SAG call you up and say, “Okay, this year is on us. Pay your dues when you earn a check.”
Dear ‘Say What?’
To clear things up, no one in SAG has ever supported ‘qualified voting’, defined as, you don’t get to vote on anything if you don’t work some stipulated amount.
I must repeat, to all those who still may a flicker of interest, ‘Qualified Voting’ has never been supported by anyone.
What has been supported by at least 1400 SAG members is ‘Affected Member Voting’. That is defined as the following: you get to vote on everything (elections, referenda, dues increases, SAG awards, etc.) except contracts you haven’t worked on more than a certain minimal amount, to be established by the national board.
Qualified Voting requires and change in the constitution. Affected Member Voting is already in the Constitution and requires a board definition.
These are indisputable facts.
Affected Member Voting is not Qualified Voting. Those in the Membership First enclave have used the latter term with near consistent regularity and thereby persisted in misidentifing the issue. It is anyone’s guess why, after years of familiarity with the constitution, they would, on this issue, choose to appear so uninformed.
The main problem is that SAG membership is split. Like it or not, membership first will have to unite with Unite for Strength for a better contract. I would love to see Nick Counter and his AMPTP react to this vote.
Gee to this mere audience member it looks like the actors who voted voted for the most famous/recognized names on the ballot…and generally not for the issues and/or the relevant political experience and skills each of the candidates brought to the table, much less for a coherent platform (UFS’s is pretty incoherent, lacking in detail or specificity, and changes with what they perceive to be the whims of the majority of actors while MF’s is more rigid and less accommodating of egos and personalities and the perceived status of some of the ‘A-listers’)
I think the biggest group of ‘fanboys’ and ‘fangirls’ out there have ironically turned out to be actors themselves. That means actors generally are likely to get little over and above what the other entertainment unions got in the negotiations because it will be all about the personalities and egos and not about actors in general *UNLESS AND UNTIL THE MEMBERSHIP PRESSURES THE ENTIRE BOARD TO FOCUS THEIR ANIMOSITY AND TOUGHNESS TOWARDS THE AMPTP*. Like say refusing to negotiate with the AMPTP without at least one conglomerate executive — the real & ultimate decision makers — in the room at all times. Those of you without ‘people’ aka managers agents and attorneys of your own had better hold your leadership’s feet to the fire on this because this is your only chance to get any kind of deal while the ‘name-brand’ actors who were just elected can easily get a do-over of their contract terms by having their ‘people’ opt them out of a bad minimum agreement with a team that makes deals for a living.
Sadly there were some less famous actors running as independents who had good ideas and in some cases prior board and/or committee experience but apparently popularity and name recognition counts for more in getting elected to SAG’s leadership.
Ben Stein got it right… as he has famously said Hollywood is indeed high school with money. And unless the entire board of SAG gets informed and toughens up fast (think of being a high schooler in an expensive prep school taking multiple honors and advanced placement classes to get onesself into a top school rather than the average student who just sort of does the minimum and takes whatever comes along), that money for too many actors will be literally be close to little more than an allowance from their parents or a summer job rather than a decent adult wage on which they can support themselves.
Good luck to the new (and possibly too busy with their day job to effectively serve their entire constituency) celebrity members…the learning curve here is pretty steep and unforgiving and I am fearful that few actors newly elected here are already up to speed on the real issues facing actors for years to come. I hope you can rise to the challenge and actually accomplish something for the general membership and not just those already in the ‘we’re successful’ club.
Thanks, Todd for clearing that up. You could see how one might be confused by the terminology and why it would offend someone who doesn’t work consistently, right? And such confusion might affect how a person might think or vote in this election and how they would react to the ongoing debate over the internal SAG/AFTRA feud,
affected member voting / qualified voting is a dead issue.
i don’t think it was wrong to rub some U4S noses in it,
being it’s an elitist and self-serving idea,
but it is virtually un-implementable.
if it was ever put to the membership to vote on whether or not
to limit their voting rights, well … c’mon.
and if an attempt is made at the board level to DEFINE the constitution as mr. waring says, the outcry will be so loud and swift the attempt will die of fright.
there is no support for this idea, except with members of the AMPTP.
Can somebody explain to this viewer why there is so much work-up about the affected member voting, either pro or con? The recent poll and this election, has shown that 75% of the membership doesn’t bother to vote in the election of their own leaders, and 90% doesn’t bother to respond to a poll about the contract they might be covered by. Looks like the affected member voting is already there. The correct term might be “don’t give a damn” voting system, but it seems to me that if something affects you, you give a damn, and hence you voice your opinion on the matter, so here you go – affected member voting.
samantha,
you’re funny and smart.
we could say the same thing about the right to vote as a US citizen.
most people don’t give a damn, but we shouldn’t take away their rights,
even if they’re too lazy or stupid to exercise them.
you know what? after careful consideration of the events leading up to and beyond this election, my informed guess is: we’re fucked.
there is a very small percentage of sag members who return their ballots.
the only way they would know how to vote when faced with the hollywood squares on crack web-site display of actors running for office, each with either a generic description of their governing intent and/or experience, or a link to their imdb page (!?) as indicative of their thoughts on the issues facing us as a union, is for people to give a shit.
and they don’t. they clearly don’t. 10% returned the card asking if sag should keep fighting for a better contract.
25% voted in the election.
there are people who make this the center of their lives. they “care,” they love power, it ups their ego cause they don’t work much or at all as actors.
the vast majority of actors? couldn’t care less. why? I’d guess because, for the vast majority of actors, getting an acting job is as likely as a meteor landing in their toilet.
hence: new media terms? force majeure? dvd residual increase? product placement? mileage increases? background performer ratios?
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah…
the screen actors guild, to withstand the intense forces battering it at this time: the amptp trying to turn middle-class actors into wal-mart workers, aftra, that paragon of integrity and altruism, fucking sag so hard its dentures are falling out, 90% unemployment at any given time, the fact that the stars of the union care about one thing and one thing only, themselves, as witnessed by their complete invisibility in the election (I mean stars – not kate fucking walsh), would need to be informed, involved because they actually have a stake in the election results, motivated, and, of course, smart.
alas, like the nation itself, sag is dumb, vain, functionally illiterate, obsessive compulsive, and has the attention span of an apple turnover.
plod, plod, plod, argue, argue, argue, entrench, entrench, entrench.
I’m gone.
Hi diddley dee, an actor’s life for me!
Now that we’ve succeded in taking the board back, let’s now take our union back.
1. Toss out the extras and restore SAG back to being an ACTORS guild.
2. Instill AMV and anyone who doesn’t make the 100K a year cannot vote.
3. Double our dues and triple the initiation fee and hire real negotiators instead of pompous blowhards like David Jolliffe.
LP
you are the one person who i would typify as a …
… “CLOWN-SWINE”.
add this to your list:
4. any SAG member who uses the initials ‘LP’ when blogging,
should receive an annual kick in his ass with his head against the wall.
why don’t you go play with your mashie-niblick?
Harry,
1. We are fighitng for the same thing. Stop with the childish name calling.
2. If we consolidate our unions, purge the deadweight, raise the dues and start playing this game like professionals we will own the AMPTP and then we can all get back to acting and making money.
LP
the background people, ( and i don’t do background work ) are never
going to be ‘purged’ from SAG. they have always been SAG members in new york and we absorbed what was left of SEG out here sometime ago.
they ain’t going anywhere.
what happens in that year when YOU don’t make 100K?
it can happen. what happens that year that you make, say 93K?
will you be a stout yeoman and say, “By gum, the 100K threshold is the rule and a good one too! I don’t get to vote! That’s fair!”
REALLY? i think you might be pissed off at being told you’ve lost your voice after years of being an earner and contributor.
merger? won’t happen real soon. even the AFTRA gang over at SAGWATCH concede that. and how can we “OWN THE AMPTP”
if we merge with a union that consistently gives the AMPTP whatever they want?
the name calling thing? LP, c’mon. you have repeatedly made derogatory remarks aimed primarily at people whose earning power is
less than yours. i have previously called you elitist, which is,
i believe, accurate. the clown-swine jab was really childish.
you’re right. my bad.
ned vaughn, in the run-up to the election, said that affected member voting is a dead issue, and i believe he was more right than he perhaps hoped to be. there is very little support for this now.
it is pretty much un-implementable.
in a union, there are people of every level and ability. every social,
economic, racial and ethnic group is represented.
so, you’re just going to have to make peace with the fact that you are going to be associated with the great unwashed, just as i will have to accept that i will be associated with a self-seeking, entitled,
country-club fellow such as yourself.