9-26-08
New National Board May Break SAG Log Jam
A small earthquake hit Southern California last week, but only members of the Screen Actors Guild felt the tremors. In a clear rebuke of SAG’s leadership in the current stalemate with film and television producers, Hollywood members put a fairly new political faction, Unite for Strength, in charge. The group, led by Amy Brenneman and Alan Arkin, took six of the 11 Hollywood board seats, leaving Membership First—which has controlled the board for much of the last decade—suddenly in the minority.
More importantly, Unite for Strength actors wrested control of the national board alternate positions and, with it, reduced Membership First’s control of the national board. Alternates replace board members when they can’t make meetings. They are chosen from the election runner-ups. But alternates often end up serving on the national board, as many higher profile celebrities either run, essentially, in name only, or are too busy working to do the day to day stuff of the board. David Jolliffe, for instance, was an alternate who was, for all intents and purposes, a national board member. Joliffe did not win enough votes in this election to keep his alternate position.
With this election, Unite for Strength and its allies in New York and the regions now have a slight majority on the 71-member board. Not that the non-Membership First groups are going to be voting in one block. It just means, as John Carter Brown, Chicago’s national board rep, pointed out, “It’s not one political party that’s in charge of the union anymore.”
The vote is seen as a mandate to cut a deal with producers and end the current TV and film negotiation stalemate. Unite for Strength’s candidates have been highly critical of SAG’s hard line stance in their negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. SAG is the only major Hollywood union not to have signed a contract with the AMPTP. The WGA, DGA and AFTRA all cut deals earlier this year. SAG was holding out for more than the other unions had agreed to, specifically in the areas of DVD residuals and new media pay, a stance which many observers thought untenable.
SAG also was holding out for an agreement on product endorsement, so actors would be paid when their characters talked about how great their Apple laptops are, or how refreshing that Gatorade was. SAG and AFTRA agree that those endorsements amount to commercials. But AFTRA couldn’t get producers to budge, and signed a contract with no protections for actors who don’t want to endorse products. SAG thought it could force the issue through.
The AMPTP has been reminding actors, with a ticker on their website, how much money they’re losing working under an expired contract. At the time the SAG election vote was announced, the AMPTP ticker was at $18 million, and counting.
The new Hollywood board members will take office Sept. 25. They will be sworn in to the national board at SAG’s Oct. 18 meeting. That newly constituted board might change the direction of negotiations, depending on the state of the talks at that time. There is also speculation that the board, with its new majority, might move sooner than later to fire executive director Doug Allen. That, too, depends on the status of the talks. SAG and the AMPTP have not met in over three months.
SAG president Alan Rosenberg took an upbeat tone about the election. In a statement released by SAG, Rosenberg said, “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.”
The election results may signal more than the desire to end the current negotiations stalemate. Many Unite for Strength candidates signed a petition earlier this year supporting qualified voting, which would limit voting per contract only to those actors who work the contract, or have worked the contract within a set number of years (PerformInk, 4/25/08). Brenneman, who received the most votes in this election, spearheaded the drive with fellow actor Ned Vaughn, who won a board alternate position. Membership First used qualified voting as an argument in this election, telling members that they would essentially lose their vote if they voted for Unite for Strength candidates.
Unite for Strength has backed off of the qualified voting proposal, though they are still clearly connected. The qualified voting site (www.workingactorsvoice.com) has been transformed into a Unite for Strength campaign site.
The Unite for Strength victory also signals a shift in the future of the SAG/AFTRA alliance, which has been all but decimated in the last year. AFTRA, citing evidence that SAG’s board was trying to undermine their union, decided to negotiate with producers on its own, greatly weakening SAG’s bargaining position. AFTRA signed a primetime television contract with the AMPTP in July—despite a blatant campaign by SAG to get AFTRA members to vote against it.
With the new board balance, though, AFTRA and SAG will likely work together again—just in time for the commercials contract, which has been extended for six months and will expire in April, 2009. The commercials contract negotiation comes on the heels of a massive study of commercials and new media that the advertisers and actors jointly commissioned. The study reportedly points toward the sweeping changes in new media and the definition of a commercial that will greatly affect how actors are paid. In the current scheme, actors whose commercials run on network TV get paid every single time the commercial runs; those whose commercials run on cable get paid a set fee per 13-week slot.
And, currently, any editing done to a commercial is considered a reshoot, and actors must be paid—even if they were never there. But with new technology, a commercial could be shot in Chicago, but the background could be changed to make it look like the characters were in Puerto Vallarta or Paris or Las Vegas—allowing for more niche marketing. Advertisers are expected to demand that the editing provision be dropped. They are also likely to demand that the current residual structure be dropped or greatly modified to account for cell phones and computers and other ways new technology has shifted the way people get information.
AFTRA president Roberta Reardon has signaled that she understands that the media has changed drastically, and that the unions will have to change their stance, too.
“You can’t stop them, you have to figure out how to work with them,” Reardon said a couple of months ago. “I don’t necessarily think I have to agree with the way they want to fix the problem, but I agree that we have the problem.”
But, she added, “I don’t think [advertisers] are out to kill the union because the unions facilitate their work in many ways.”
SAG first has to get through the TV and film negotiations before it can take on other issues.
Unite for Strength actors who won board seats are: Brenneman, Arkin, Ken Howard, Kate Walsh and Pamela Reed. Incumbent Morgan Fairchild is not officially a Unite for Strength member, but was endorsed by the group. Fairchild has been the lone independent voice on the Hollywood board and ran against current president Rosenberg three years ago.
Membership First winners are JoBeth Williams, Scott Bakula, Lainie Kazan, Keith Carradine and Joely Fisher.
SAG also elected New York and regional reps, though Chicago’s seat wasn’t up for grabs. The New York reps are Sam Robards, Rebecca Damon, Matt Servitto, Traci Godfrey and Mark Blum. Regional reps are Bill Mootos (Boston), Suzanne Burkhead (Dallas/Fort Worth), Ed Kelly (Detroit), James Huston (Houston), Cece DuBois (Nashville), Art Lynch (Nevada) and Stephen F. Schmidt (Washington D.C./Baltimore).