4-25-08
“Qualified Voting” for Working Actors?
As the Screen Actors Guild continues its negotiations with film and television producers, there are some actors who are worried that any decision that might be made on whether or not to strike will be in the hands of actors who don’t work in film and television.
That was the subject last month of an editorial by Peter Bart, the long-time editor of Daily Variety, and an erstwhile actor who once earned a SAG card. Now he—and a number of agents, casting directors, and even producers who used to be actors—are sent ballots for all of the major SAG contracts. Commercials. TV/Theatrical. Basic Cable. They all get to vote.
But Bart questioned that practice in his editorial highlighting a group now calling itself Working Actors Voice, which is advocating qualified voting; that is, actors can only vote on a contract if they’ve worked the contract.
The group started out as a simple e-mail forward, then turned into a petition drive. Within weeks, over 1,200 actors signed the petition and it has turned into a Web site, with over 1,500 names, and growing. And many of the names are ones you might recognize: Glenn Close, Meryl Streep, Jamie-Lee Curtis, David Duchovny, Ethan Hawke, Rob Lowe, Gwyneth Paltrow… Many Chicago actors have also signed. (Go to www.workingactorsvoice.com.)
What they want seems simple: If you’ve worked even a few days per year of the contract in question during the past two contract cycles (six years), or if you’re vested in the pension and retirement plan, you can vote on the next contract. If you haven’t worked the contract, you can’t vote on it.
Seems simple. And Ned Vaughn can’t figure out why anybody would oppose it.
“Two-thirds of our union earns less than $1,000 per year,” said Vaughn. “That’s a gigantic chunk of votes that has a really small stake in the outcome.”
Vaughn launched the petition drive with fellow actor Amy Brenneman after some conversations on set one day last fall. They started talking about the possibility of a TV/Theatricals strike, and they became concerned, said Vaughn, “that it might not be an effective work action. That worried us greatly.”
Vaughn and his fellow petitioners also are concerned with people who do have a stake in the outcome, namely producers who hold SAG cards who would vote in their own interests.
Working actors, Vaughn said, are “not feeling like we have a voice at the guild.” Qualified voting, he said, is a way to get the actors who work the contracts truly involved, and to allow them to make decisions about their own jobs.
But it’s the issue of involvement that worries Chicago SAG branch president Todd Hissong. To him, limiting the number of actors who can vote on certain contracts is disenfranchisement.
“We shouldn’t be asking people not to vote,” said Hissong. “We should be helping more people vote. We’re out there every day screaming at people to get involved, to become engaged with their union.”
Hissong also feels that implementing qualified voting would take a member-wide referendum. “In that case, you’re asking people to vote and give away their vote.”
Vaughn disagrees. He points to a clause in SAG’s constitution which says that “all collective bargaining contracts negotiated by the Guild shall be submitted for ratification to the membership affected thereby.”
“The point of our initiative is that we contend they are not honoring the constitution as it is written,” said Vaughn. “The first article of the constitution says ‘membership affected thereby.’ It doesn’t say entire membership.”
But the Phase 1 agreement with AFTRA does specify that members at large must vote to ratify a Phase 1 agreement or a strike. In order for the petition to work, Working Actors Voice would have to get AFTRA on board.
AFTRA president Roberta Reardon doesn’t rule out the possibility of what she calls “affected member voting,” but it’s not one of her priorities, with TV/Theatrical and then Commercial negotiations underway for SAG and coming up for AFTRA.
“AFTRA can do affected member voting now, and we do,” said Reardon. “We’ve been asked to appoint a joint committee from SAG and AFTRA to study affected member voting, and I have no problem with that.”
There’s also some question about the impact of the petition. It is not legally binding. And, while Vaughn had hopes that the issue would be taken up at the April SAG plenary, it was instead relegated to Guild Government Review Committee, which Working Actors Voice is calling, “the committee where things go to die.” That ensures that the issue will not be addressed again until the current negotiations with producers are well over.
Vaughn also said that Working Actors Voice is flexible on the amount an actor must work to qualify. The proposal on their Web site could be finessed if and when it is taken up by the board.
The issue of qualified voting came up a few months ago when the SAG board was demanding that AFTRA cede their 50-50 negotiating position in the TV/Theatricals contract for more proportional representation. Many board members who work the TV/Theatricals contract stated for the record that the members who don’t work the contract should step aside. Yet few, if any, of those voices proposing proportional representation have signed the Working Actors Voice petition.