AFTRA-SAG On Verge of Permanent Split as Negotiations Approach

BY Carrie L. Kaufman

Actors have been out in force at the Writers Guild of America picket lines in Hollywood and New York. They know that their contract expires next. And what the writers get, the actors (and directors) will likely get, too.

But the Writers Guild West and the Writers Guild East—two separate unions—are in agreement on this strike. They are fighting with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) for new media residuals. They are fighting to get paid—and paid fairly—for reruns of TV shows on the Internet or posting of podcasts that can be transferred to your iPod. And they want to be paid for any other, as yet unknown, technological advances that put their work out there in new ways.

The Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, however, agree on almost nothing. The two unions have negotiated film and television contracts jointly, with a formal agreement called Phase 1, since 1980. Now, they can’t even get together to talk about what the issues are in the upcoming negotiations with producers. Their contract expires on June 30.

And the film and TV negotiations aren’t the only ones on the horizon. AFTRA and SAG have eight contracts up this year, including the commercials contract with the Joint Policy Committee (JPC) of advertisers, which expires next fall.

Paul Christie, former president of SAG’s New York local and current national board member, points out that the joint Wages and Working Conditions committee is normally meeting by now. The W&W, as it is commonly called, sets out the issues and stakes the unions’ proposals for negotiations.

But he feels that SAG executive director Doug Allen is stalling, stirring up a feud with AFTRA—and with many members of his own union—instead of focusing on confronting producers.

“The question we all ask is what is your game plan,” Christie said. “There are no answers coming back. The JPC is approaching off the East Coast, the AMPTP is approaching off the West Coast and Doug Allen’s plan is to attack Mexico.”

Except Mexico is fighting back. It’s looking increasingly like AFTRA is willing to make production deals with or without their sister union.

SAG and AFTRA have been feuding quietly over the past year about two issues: proportional representation and basic cable. The issues are simple. The solutions are certainly not.

Proportional representation is SAG’s proposal, rolled out this summer (see “Jurisdictional Disputes Threaten to Break AFTRA/SAG Alliance” in the Aug. 31 issue of PerformInk) to change the makeup of the TV and film negotiating committee to distribute votes according to the percentage of each unions’ members who actually work the contract. SAG says that their members work 85 percent of the TV and film contract, so they should have 85 percent of the vote. Under Phase 1, though, AFTRA and SAG share the vote equally, 50-50.

This, says SAG president Alan Rosenberg, is simply unfair. He points out that many SAG members in Hollywood are still miffed at a negotiation vote they lost in 2005, when DVD residuals were on the table. Eight of the 13 SAG members wanted to hold the line and demand a raise in DVD residuals. Five SAG and all 13 AFTRA members disagreed. The “no’s” had a majority, and carried the day. But the SAG members who voted yes—and their supporters—were upset that the majority within their own caucus meant nothing.

“My feeling is that if I vote in the majority in my own union, my vote would be discounted,” said Rosenberg. “It doesn’t feel to me like we are a unified organism, this joint negotiating committee.”

The joint negotiating committee might not exist in the future at all—at least on the TV and film contract. This past summer some Hollywood SAG members pushed through a resolution calling on SAG to vote as a unit, or bloc. Whatever the majority opinion is within the SAG caucus is what the SAG caucus would bring to the table. In the 2005 case, it would have resulted in a 13-13 standoff with AFTRA.

AFTRA has cried foul, and declared that SAG has effectively ended Phase 1 by undercutting the 50-50 vote. And AFTRA is prepared, says president Roberta Reardon, to deal with TV, as well as commercial, producers alone.

“If SAG doesn’t remove bloc voting we’re going to have to look at how to do our process in a different way,” says Reardon, who points out that even with joint negotiations, SAG and AFTRA still sign separate, albeit identical, agreements with producers.

“We can certainly run a W&W committee together and negotiate separately,” Reardon says.

That means that SAG and AFTRA could come out with two different deals. More importantly, it means that producers would have the upper hand, signing a better deal with one union and blocking the other out.

And that’s the crux of the other dispute between SAG and AFTRA. AFTRA has steadily been gaining share in basic cable as production of series made for cable has been growing. They currently have 200 signed shows on basic cable, according to AFTRA spokesperson John Hinrichs. Approximately 85 percent of those shows have been signed since 2000, with 60 percent coming since 2005.

Basic cable is not jointly negotiated by SAG and AFTRA. SAG’s rates are similar to their network television rates, while AFTRA has opted to negotiate each show individually. In many cases, AFTRA has given producers a better deal than they would have had with a SAG contract.

Even more egregious to Rosenberg is that AFTRA has been giving producers a set number of free reruns of shows for the first year of their contracts.

“There are people who believe that our job is to help employers keep the business going,” said Rosenberg. “They want to take our residuals away.”

Reardon laughs at this, and points out that basic cable, unlike network TV, reruns shows five or six nights a week in order to gain audience. Many producers who get 13 free reruns use them up in a matter of weeks, and then AFTRA actors start getting paid residuals on subsequent reruns.

“People on ‘Army Wives’ are already earning residuals on their first year of earning,” says Reardon. “Their [free reruns] are used up.”

Reardon also points out that after a show establishes itself, then AFTRA renegotiates for the next season. The show “The Minor Accomplishments of Jackie Woodman” started out with lesser rates, but is now A-rated, like SAG’s contracts.

She also says that the Courtney Cox show, “Dirt,” earns actors the same money as Showtime’s “Weeds,” which is under a SAG contract.

Still, Reardon concedes that many of AFTRA’s basic cable contracts have terms that are less than SAG’s “one size fits all” model. She argues that basic cable budgets are far smaller than network TV budgets and that many of these shows would shoot in Canada if they were forced into higher actor salaries.

“I don’t buy that. Many of those shows are shot with people who wouldn’t shoot in Canada,” says John Carter Brown, Chicago representative to the SAG national board, and former AFTRA national board member. “That said,” adds Brown, “SAG needs to become more nimble in addressing lower budget productions.”

Rosenberg doesn’t disagree with that.

“The biggest mistake we’ve made is not including AFTRA in our basic cable negotiations,” the SAG president says. But, he adds, “I don’t believe it’s necessary to drop our rates to keep work in this country. It’s not that they’re lowering rates to keep people from going non-union; they’re dropping their rates for producers to choose between SAG and AFTRA.”

Now, though, the stand-off between the two unions may result in producers having to choose between AFTRA and SAG in network television, a scenario which everybody involved agrees would only hurt actors.

“It doesn’t make sense to divide the house,” says Brown. “Why would you want to have separate negotiations? You want the strength of the combined union.”

Both SAG’s Doug Allen and AFTRA’s Reardon have had nasty public exchanges in the past couple of months. Allen published an 11-page comparison between SAG and AFTRA’s basic cable contracts in the fall issue of SAG’s membership magazine. Reardon shot back with a press release that called Allen’s numbers cherry picked and manipulated. She and AFTRA executive director Kim Roberts Hedgpeth also publicly called for SAG to rescind bloc voting.

For AFTRA, this is a do or die issue. If SAG does not rescind bloc voting, Reardon and Hedgpeth feel Phase 1 is effectively over. And they will negotiate without SAG.

And, according to Rosenberg, SAG is more than willing to negotiate without AFTRA—even going on strike without their sister union if they have to.

But Christie points out that even SAG’s union isn’t unified, and that many New York and branch SAG members might not follow a strike call.

In fact, Christie says that New York SAG members are talking openly about seceding from SAG, starting a SAG East union that would be separate from SAG Hollywood—much like the two writers unions.

“We’re not going to abandon our relationship with AFTRA, no matter what Doug [Allen] chooses to do,” Christie says.

“The desire that keeps gaining more and more traction is that Hollywood can negotiate anything they want, their contracts could be as restrictive as they want to be,” and a new union made up of non-Hollywood members can be more flexible.

“There comes a time when you just say this is a bad marriage, it’s a relationship that doesn’t work,” Christie says. “We don’t agree with anything these guys are doing.”

To that Rosenberg responds that SAG members outside Hollywood are responding in knee-jerk fashion to old issues and past disputes.

“For the past two years [since Rosenberg has become president], we have acted reasonably and rationally at every single turn. People are still stuck five years ago.”