7-18-08
AFTRA Members Ratify Contract
SAG Still Haggling with Producers
AFTRA got its deal. The SAG campaign to defeat it lost. And, typically, both sides are claiming victory.
Members of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists last week approved the deal with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, despite a public campaign by the Screen Actors Guild to convince dual cardholders to vote against the agreement.
For AFTRA president Roberta Reardon, the victory is vindication. Over 62 percent of AFTRA members voted for the contract. “Almost two out of every three actors,” she points out.
But SAG president Alan Rosenberg points out that AFTRA’s net code contract was approved earlier this year with a 93 percent vote, indicating that many dual cardholders did vote against the deal.
Moreover, despite the observations of most Hollywood pundits, Rosenberg doesn’t rule out the possibility of a walkout.
“I think we have 75,000 [non-dual cardholding members] who do not agree with AFTRA, and would support us if we called for a strike,” Rosenberg says. SAG would need 75 percent—or roughly 90,000 votes—to authorize a strike.
The ratification of AFTRA’s deal seems to have emboldened producers, who would not budge last Thursday from their final offer to SAG. But Rosenberg believes that’s just part of the game of negotiation.
“We gave the AMPTP a comprehensive response to their last offer,” Rosenberg said last Friday. “They came back to us and continued talking to us, even though they said it was their final offer.” He indicated that the two groups are having backchannel discussions about future meetings.
And, says Rosenberg, “We’re not that far apart in the financial package,” which could mean there might actually be some sort of DVD pay raise.
But the financial package is not the main issue for Rosenberg. He feels that this is a fight to sustain his union, and allow for a middle class in the next generation of actors. His main problem with AFTRA’s contract, and with the latest offer the AMPTP made to SAG, is that in the seminal area of new media, as he sees it, the door is open to not pay actors residuals.
“We believe this is the beginning of the end of residuals,” he says.
That depends on how you define residuals. If you define it as getting paid every time the product is shown, then you would agree with Rosenberg. If you define it as getting paid in bulk increments, then you would think AFTRA got a decent deal.
None of the new media provisions in the AFTRA contract give actors payment every time their “show” runs—that is, somebody clicks or downloads or streams. Some of the provisions give producers free runs for a period of time before payment kicks in; and when it does kick in, actors are paid in blocks—per 100,000 downloads or in increments of, say, 26 weeks. In that respect, the new media provisions resemble the basic cable commercials contract, which pays actors a chunk of money per 13-week cycle, rather than every time the commercial runs.
Reardon concedes that the chunk of money actors will get for new media isn’t much.
“It’s a baloney sandwich, it’s not a steak dinner,” she says, “but the fact is [producers] are not making much money on the web.” Their intent with showing TV episodes on the web is to keep audiences interested and drive them back to TV, where the producers and networks can make money with advertising. Most people, producers realized, only want to catch an episode on the web that they missed on TV—or see a scene they particularly liked again. Making it available online keeps those viewers hooked into the show.
“SAG has this mistaken idea that [new media] is this great big cash cow, and it isn’t,” Reardon adds. “They have to be making money in order to pay you.”
She cites a study the DGA did last year that showed that producers won’t make money on the web until at least 2011.
“The revenue that’s made off the Internet is less than 1 percent of the revenue generated by these companies,” says Reardon, “and it won’t even reach 1 percent at the end of three years.”
For Rosenberg, though, it isn’t the cash that’s generated now that’s the problem. It’s jurisdiction and precedent.
“They’re trying to neuter our union, trying to take away protections that actors have enjoyed for generations. And unfortunately, AFTRA is making it easy for them to neuter our union.”
Rosenberg also takes issue with the new media provision that allows new media material made for less than $15,000 per minute to be “experimental.”
“The AMPTP has made it clear to us that when the budget falls below $15,000 per minute, they intend to do it non-union,” says Rosenberg.
Reardon counters that these new media provisions are a step above the ones that just expired. She also points out that the new media part of this contract will expire in three years. That means that when the new contract is up for negotiation, AFTRA (and the DGA) will come to the table with producers with a blank slate on this issue.
“Three years from now, DGA and AFTRA will be looking at sunsetting new media terms and how to redefine them,” says Reardon. “We’re going to be able to go in and look at the deal memos and see how they built their business plans.”
And they are going to be able to do this because of the $15,000 per minute (or $300,000 per show, or $500,000 for entire series) threshold. Any production that is done below the threshold can do it completely non-union. But, if only one actor in the episode or spot is a qualified union member, then everybody in the production must be paid union scale. So, if someone wants, say, Miley Cyrus to sing her latest hit via web streaming, then even if the producers’ budget is less than the threshold, everybody on the shoot will get paid AFTRA rates. One union actor obliterates the thresholds. Reardon sees this as an opportunity to see how the industry uses professional actors. Getting actors covered, even under what she concedes are high thresholds, is a way to gather a lot of data. And she thinks that the industry will rely more on good actors—and recognizable faces—for such short new media content.
Both Reardon and Rosenberg have their eyes on the future. They just vehemently disagree on which road to take to get there.
One of the other sticking points between SAG and the producers is something called “force majeur.” It’s a provision that’s been in place since the 1920s and it allows actors to get paid in case their production is cancelled or delayed through no fault of their own. Earthquakes, for instance. Or fires. Or strikes by other unions.
“We filed 87 claims for casts who were put out of work by the writers strike,” Rosenberg says. “The AMPTP wants us to waive all of those claims, and they want us to take that out of our collective bargaining agreement.”
Rosenberg also says SAG and producers are at an impasse over product integration. AFTRA did not gain anything on this front, much to Reardon’s dismay. Rosenberg is emotionally tied to this issue. Actors who do commercials within a show should be paid separately for the commercial. But SAG isn’t even asking for that. They’re asking for the right to refuse. Sometimes actors have product conflict issues, which is to say that they might be signed to a national deal with Burger King when the producer of their TV show makes them do a pitch for McDonald’s. Sometimes actors simply don’t want to do commercials.
While Rosenberg is still mired in talks over this contract, Reardon is looking forward. She has called for all Hollywood labor unions—working through the CIO—to convene well before the next round of negotiations, so that they might work out a strategy together. This year, SAG and the WGA worked closely, but AFTRA and the DGA were not included.
Building off of a suggestion by George Clooney, Reardon has called for an industry summit of top actors, performers and union leaders “to engage in a thoughtful, constructive discussion of how we can achieve unity among performers—and ultimately, if feasible, merger of the performers’ unions.”
And, despite the bitter acrimony between SAG and AFTRA over the last year, Reardon is looking for a way to jointly negotiate the commercials contract, which is set to expire in October.
“I intend to promptly review with our national elected leadership and the presidents of all AFTRA locals the conditions needed to restore trust to re-establish joint bargaining on our respective commercials contracts,” she said in a statement announcing the vote results.
Reardon doesn’t know how, through all the acrimony, the two unions could reestablish trust, though she suggests a change in SAG’s leadership couldn’t hurt. But she also knows that it’s something that members want.
“The internecine warfare between SAG and AFTRA makes our members angry,” Reardon says. “They prefer it when we bargain together.”
Right now, though, SAG has to finish its bargaining. And Rosenberg does feel the guild has some leverage.
“We do all the movies,” he says, “and people who produce movies are ready to get back to work.”