SAG Thinks, Blinks

The Screen Actors Guild bowed to the inevitable yesterday and set a concrete date -- April 15 -- for commencement of talks with the studios. Had SAG not done so, it faced the prospect of a rival actors' union, AFTRA, setting a date for talks first, and thereby setting a template for SAG's negotiations.

That prospect -- which seems unlikely now -- would have undermined SAG's leverage, a situation unacceptable to SAG. That's because SAG represent movies and almost all primetime television shows, whereas AFTRA represents no movies and only three primetime shows. The contract being negotiated concerns movies and primetime shows (as well as some other areas).

The problem for SAG is that AFTRA may not be looking for the same deal points SAG is. The situation's unclear, because the committees of both unions reportedly agreed on the same package of demands. Yet, the recently-agreed AFTRA daytime pact (an agreement that is solely negotiated by AFTRA) doesn't track with SAG's publicly-stated demands, suggesting that AFTRA may be more willing to compromise than SAG. That's been SAG's concern with AFTRA in general; each union has a rationale for the approach -- hard line or conciliatory -- that it takes.

In any case, the key publicly-discernible differences are as follows (for detailed explanation of these issues, see my previous blog article):

First, SAG wants improvements over the WGA deal in new media, apparently in at least two areas: elimination of the 17-24 day window during which no residuals are payable for ad-supported streaming of new television shows; and elimination or reduction of the budget floors below which certain shows produced for new media are not covered by the union agreement.

Second, SAG wants compensation for forced endorsements (product placement on steroids). AFTRA's daytime agreement gained some improvement in a related matter, which is announcer endorsements of products, so perhaps the unions are close on this issue.

Third, SAG wants improvement over the writers deal is DVD residuals. These rates (percentages) have been low since 1984, when the directors accepted what the writers and actors view as a bad deal, one which has persisted to this day. AFTRA, in contrast, did not obtain (nor, presumably, seek) such improvements when it negotiated its daytime deal.

Another point worth considering: if SAG does strike -- which seems less likely now -- will the strike rules prohibit SAG actors from working not only on SAG projects but also on AFTRA contracts? (Although this by definition exceeds the jurisdiction of the SAG agreement, recall that the WGA strike rules prohibited writing for animation, even though this is beyond the WGA's jurisdiction.) If so, the 44,000 dual cardholders -- i.e., members of both unions -- would be put in an untenable position if working on AFTRA-covered shows: violate the rules and be subject to SAG discipline, or obey the rules and face discharge by their employers for breaching their employment agreements. Quite a dilemma.

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Comments

[scottellington]

A hypothetical leverage question:

WHAT IF all three leading contenders for November's audience-participation-reality-show jointly asked the American people to boycott all studio product until a new contract for actors has been negotiated?

The candidates would declare their independence of the media cartel while simultaneously placing unprecedented power squarely in the hands of SAG leadership.

[divadarya]

Scott, that would be an amazing show of solidarity, which is something that both Alan Rosenberg and Doug Allen (SAG's President and Executive Director) are incredibly inept or ignorant about creating. Just based on public facts, they've split their union into slightly unequal halves(there are more SAG actors) when they apparently tried to raid AFTRA's jurisdiction on "The Bold and the Beautiful" and were told by the AFTRA half of their board to go to Hell, in essence. They've also created a loud public rift between "have" and "have-not" actors, a rift that was not apparent during their support of the Writers. They have also dragged their feet on negotiating for no apparent good reason, which is why they were jumped by the craft union, IATSE, which is going into early negotiations with AMTMP with an incredibly strong hand.
The sad fact is that both of these guys are bad negotiators(from a movie industry perspective anyway, which is all that matters to them) and there are already alientated SAG members screaming for their heads in the next elections. As far as the "Media Cartel" goes, they refused to listen or take advice from other industry unions and now they are outside the herd and vulnerable; the town has very little stomach for a strike after 100 days with only a trickle of work.

[scottellington]

divadarya,
My question was an attempt to bypass the multiple layers of complex adversarial history to which Mr. Handel's neatly-streamlined thumbnail description refers. The "media cartel" is represented by the AMPTP, whose job it is to preserve for the cartel control of more and more important stuff that transnational corporations aren't really supposed to control; creative content, political campaigns and technological progress.