1-30-09
SAG Fires Allen, Changes Negotiating Committee
David White and John McGuire Return to Lead the Guild
The fire that has been smoldering under the Screen Actors Guild erupted earlier this month, and resulted on Monday with the firing of executive director Doug Allen and the dissolution of the TV/Film negotiating committee.
Allen will be replaced at the SAG offices by David White, who will be interim executive director. Longtime SAG staff member (who is supposed to be in semi-retirement) John T. McGuire will take over negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. He’ll be backed by a task force of board members, which will replace the negotiating committee.
The initial move to fire Allen and reconstitute the negotiating committee came at a Jan. 12-13 national board meeting that was called to discuss the current state of negotiations and SAG’s announced strike referendum (PerformInk, Dec. 19). The board members who backed the firing were in the majority, but they were blocked by a minority, mostly Hollywood, faction, which wants a strike and which used Roberts Rules of Order to filibuster a 28-hour marathon session.
The board majority then used a little known provision in SAG’s constitution called “Written Assent,” which allows the board to vote by signatures. According to the group Unite for Strength, a SAG faction which opposes Allen and current president Alan Rosenberg, all but one board member from New York, all board members from the regional branches, and all board members from Hollywood outside of those who belong to Membership First, signed the document. New York president Sam Freed and Unite for Strength co-founder Ned Vaughn walked the document into the SAG offices.
White was general council for SAG from 2002 to 2006, and is familiar with and respected by much of the staff, as well as board members.
“I can’t speak highly enough of this man,” said Chicago’s national board representative John Carter Brown. “He’s got institutional knowledge, he’s got administrative skills, he knows the majority of people working there.”
McGuire, who has been with SAG for 40 years, is almost revered by staff and board members.
“He’s the smartest man in the room. He has the confidence and loyalty of every staff member. He has that way about him that inspires confidence,” says one staff member. “He will bring sanity to the negotiations. He’s a professional and he understands actors.”
McGuire will not only take over the TV/Film negotiations, but he will be SAG’s leader in all upcoming negotiations—including the commercials contract.
Doug Allen was hired as SAG’s executive director in October of 2006. His firing was mostly over how he has handled the TV/Film negotiations, but Unite for Strength and individual board members point to Allen’s lack of success in other areas.
Paul Christie, a national board member and former New York branch president, points out that eight contracts were due to be negotiated in 2008, and SAG has not finished one.
“He [Allen] hasn’t done anything that was mandated in his contract, and at the same time has poisoned the relationship with people we work with,” said Christie.
Christie is hoping that McGuire will be an antidote to the poison with producers. Currently the AMPTPs’ final offer is not even as good as the one AFTRA signed in July. And the website for the AMPTP keeps ticking off what actors would have made if they had just copied the AFTRA deal.
“We’ve lost almost 50 million now, had we taken the deal in July,” said Christie.
McGuire’s first order of business will be to get the AMPTP back to the table. The two sides are still stuck on internet and DVD residuals and force majeure—money owed to actors who missed work because of the writers’ strike last year. They haven’t met in seven months.