8-31-07
Jurisdictional Disputes Threaten to Break AFTRA/SAG Alliance
Phase 1. The term implies movement, collaboration, a framework for the future. But for The Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA), Phase 1 is, well, stuck. Except now, it looks like it may be moving—backwards.
In 1980, after a bitter strike against film and television producers, SAG and AFTRA decided it was time to talk about merging their two unions. They came up with Phase 1 which mandated that SAG and AFTRA negotiate certain contracts as a unit, with each union putting an equal number of representatives on the various negotiating committees. At the same time, though it’s not a formal part of Phase 1, AFTRA and SAG informally decided to split jurisdiction between tape and film: if it was on videotape, it was AFTRA’s purview, if it was on film, it was SAG’s.
To the planners, these agreements were supposed to be long forgotten in favor of outright merger by now. But a faction of Hollywood actors has engineered the defeat of merger twice in the last seven years. And now, the two unions seem to be fighting over who owns all that has been acquired in their almost three decades-old relationship.
SAG Chicago local president Todd Hissong puts it this way: “A man and a woman have been engaged to be married for 27 years. The woman can’t get the man to the alter. The woman is now saying that it’s time for us to see other people, and the man is now pissed.”
Those “other people” come with a new set of clothes: digital. Digital is neither videotape nor film. In the last few years, AFTRA and SAG have been sharing jurisdiction. And AFTRA, in the last few years, has been organizing digital broadcasts. A lot. SAG says those shows are still theirs, even though a new medium has arisen.
The latest spat came at the SAG national board plenary in July, when the board instituted a bloc voting arrangement that AFTRA says all but guts Phase 1. But it didn’t start out that way.
The SAG New York faction, led by New York local president Paul Christie, put a proposal on the table to expand Phase 1 to include anything that SAG or AFTRA have joint interest in. Currently, Phase 1 covers film and prime-time television, including prime-time cable, like “The Sopranos.” It also covers the commercials contract, industrials and public television. But what it doesn’t cover is basic cable, shows like “Hanna Montana” and “Rescue Me.” And those are the kinds of shows that are using digital—and that AFTRA is organizing. Since 2000, AFTRA has organized over 300 basic cable shows that SAG thinks should be theirs.
But expansion wasn’t in the cards. Instead, SAG national executive director Doug Allen proposed that SAG stand together against what he sees as AFTRA’s encroachment into SAG territory. He proposed the bloc voting system, whereby all of the SAG members on a Phase 1 joint negotiating committee will vote with one voice. That is to say, on a committee with 20 members—10 SAG and 10 AFTRA—if six SAG members decide to vote “yes,” then SAG’s vote is “yes,” no matter that the other four members want to vote “no.” This, say both Christie and Hissong, disenfranchises actors outside of Hollywood. To AFTRA, it is nothing less than a declaration of war on Phase 1.
“We are still on record fully supporting Phase I,” said AFTRA president Roberta Reardon in a phone interview. “To change the composition of the bargaining committee disrespects one of the unions. It would be irresponsible for our union to be dictated to by another union.”
Reardon and AFTRA national executive director Kim Roberts Hedgpeth say they’ve been talking to their SAG counterparts about changes in Phase 1. In a letter to members, SAG’s Allen said that AFTRA has refused to talk.
“We have had a number of committee meetings and private conversations since” March, when the two unions started talking at the AFL-CIO convention in Las Vegas, said Reardon.
“We have, perhaps, not given them the answers that they wanted to hear, but we have been extremely responsive.”
SAG is proposing that, since contracts like the film and television agreement serve 85 percent SAG members, the negotiating committee for those contracts be proportionate to who works them. AFTRA still wants 50-50 representation. And a number of actors have pointed out in e-mails and blogs that many of the SAG people on the negotiating committees haven’t worked the contracts they’re negotiating for in years, so the “who works the contract” argument is specious.
Neither Allen nor SAG national president Alan Rosenberg responded to phone calls for this article.
Regardless of the “he said/she said” spats going on between the two unions, Christie thinks the recent bloc voting amendment will not be in place by the time the TV and film contract is up for negotiation next summer.
“I don’t think it will ever come to pass,” said Christie. “I think we’ll come up with a better solution before we have to do it.”
John Carter Brown, Chicago’s SAG national board representative, agrees.
“I don’t think that is something that will stand,” said Brown. “I think it will be changed before we go into negotiations.”
Brown, Christie and Hissong point out that the unions will stand no chance against producers if they’re fighting when negotiations start.
“You can’t walk in and have the industry pay attention to you when the industry knows you are that divided,” said Brown.
Both Brown and Christie hinted that there was already talk among SAG insiders to change the bloc voting rule at the next plenary in October.
“We need to grow up and we need to do it in a hurry,” said Christie, who also pointed out: “We wouldn’t be doing this if we had done four or five years ago what we thought was a good idea to do—which was merge the two unions.”