comment #1

Terry McCarty says ...

SAG President Alan Rosenberg's comments on the SAG/AFTRA bargaining split, as found on Nikki Finke's DEADLINE HOLLYWOOD DAILY:
From: SAG President Alan Rosenberg
Date: March 30, 2008 8:08:40 PM PDT
To: SAG Members
Subject: AFTRA ENDED JOINT BARGAINING RELATIONSHIP WITH SAG

Dear Screen Actors Guild members,

You will hear many things over the next few days about AFTRA’s decision to effectively terminate our Phase One joint bargaining relationship. We have been jointly bargaining several contracts with AFTRA since 1981 and the AFTRA board voted yesterday to end that relationship (under the Phase One Agreement) and forge ahead without SAG.

AFTRA HAS THREE TELEVISION SHOWS UNDER THIS CONTRACT AND THEY DON’T COVER MOTION PICTURES.

As your President, I feel it is important that you have the facts.

AFTRA leaders claim…That SAG attempted to “raid” its jurisdiction and to “campaign” to help The Bold & The Beautiful daytime drama actors decertify from AFTRA.

FACT: Actors from the show, who are also SAG members, asked to meet with us. We heard their complaints of extreme dissatisfaction with AFTRA, AND DIRECTED THEM TO TALK WITH AFTRA. We did not have a campaign of any kind.

AFTRA leaders claim… The Bold & The Beautiful incident was “the last straw,” but waited more than two weeks to raise the issue. Instead, the day before the joint SAG/AFTRA board meeting, they alerted the press (not SAG) and accused us of poaching. Two days earlier, they had participated in our two-day national joint Wages & Working conditions meeting where members of both unions VOTED UNANIMOUSLY to approve the proposal package. Didn’t the “last straw” matter then?

AFTRA never has stated how it plans to come to the aid of the B &B actors. They are too busy blaming us for the problem. Institution first, members last.

FACT: SAG IS NOT INVOLVED IN ANY WAY IN ORGANIZING DAYTIME DRAMA ACTORS. While we have great respect for daytime actors, this is AFTRA’s area. In fact, the SAG national board passed a motion Saturday morning to assure AFTRA (as AFTRA requested) that SAG will abide by the AFL CIO rules regulating raiding.

FACT: Despite this expression of good faith and reassurance from SAG, AFTRA leaders voted to “suspend” Phase One and go it alone. They marched into our board meeting, said they would not be bargaining jointly, and left. The joint board meeting to approve the proposal package for joint bargaining never even took place.


AFTRA leaders claim …SAG has undertaken a campaign to discredit them.

FACT: AFTRA bargained cable deals at rates lower than SAG minimums and waived residuals. They fully admit this and are now getting backlash from members who are wondering where their residuals went. AFTRA must be accountable for granting these waivers to the contracts we have fought hard to achieve. Again, how is this problem SAG’s fault? Will they now go bargain these sub-standard contracts for primetime network/pay TV programs and lower the bar for all SAG actors in the process?


AFTRA claims …that SAG Hollywood leaders are looking for a strike.

FACT: Not true. Nobody wants a strike, especially after the 100 day WGA strike. Elected SAG leaders across the country want to be strong on your behalf at the bargaining table. YOU elected your leadership. You elected me to achieve the best possible wages and working conditions. While the DGA and WGA made deals, we are not directors or writers. We are actors, and actors have different issues that are not in the DGA and WGA deals.

What’s next?

We will begin negotiations. We believe the AMPTP will be eager to do so, especially since motion picture start dates are critical. Your national board approved the proposal package yesterday that so many members contributed to during our W & W process. We are ready to negotiate.

Members are our first priority, not the institution. As your president, I vow to continue to work hard to improve the lives of all actors and their families. You deserve nothing less.

comment #2

Working Actor says ...

Thoughts on the Saturday March 29th exit of AFTRA from joint negotiations with SAG...

AFTRA walked out of the room last week because current SAG
elected officers were found to be engaged in illegal raiding of AFTRA programming – an activity prohibited by the AFL-CIO Constitution, Article 20. At the 11th hour last weekend as both SAG & AFTRA boards were meeting separately, an AFL-CIO mediator urged SAG Chief Exec Doug Allen to sign a “no-raiding” agreement, precluding SAG from attempting to decertify AFTRA shows. Mr. Allen refused to sign. That speaks volumes about why AFTRA left the room.

Working actors belong to both SAG & AFTRA. For 27 years our unions have been negotiating major contracts jointly under the agreement “Phase One to Merger.” But the “membershipfirst” contingent of the current Hollywood SAG Board has spent the last year and your dues money attacking its sister union and blaming AFTRA for poaching, undercutting, offering weak contracts, etc. – all in order to wriggle out of the sensible strictures of Phase One -- misguided broadsides that have led to:
1) July 2007 SAG Board vote to sink Phase one with "bloc voting" and "proportionality."
2) Hollywood SAG Board members disenfranchising our very own union brothers & sisters on the SAG NY & Regional branches by effectively nullifying their votes.
3) Endless time-wasting and obfuscation by current Hollywood SAG leadership through the Autumn of '07 vis-a-vis Phase 1 (reminding me of Bill Clinton's infamous quote, "It depends on what the definition of the word "is" is.")
4) SAG Chief Exec Doug Allen spending members' dues money on anti-AFTRA attacks in official SAG member journals & communiqués.
5) The bullet-in-the-gun anti-Phase-1 referendum the SAG board threatened to send to members in February.
6) Hollywood SAG Board membershipfirst outrage & despair over learning from President Rosenberg & CEO Doug Allen that according to legal counsel all of the aforementioned tactics were unconstitutional.
7) A sitting membershipfirst Hollywood SAG Board member convincing her pal the Bold & Beautiful soap actress to lead a decertification campaign against AFTRA. Her stated rationale: "This will help lead to merger"...and Mars is made of Marzipan...

Phase One, inked in 1981, did union actors a huge favor; it tied both SAG & AFTRA together in joint negotiations to preclude competition. The SAG & AFTRA officers who created Phase One knew that SAG had the lion’s share of the three hours of prime-time tv and motion pictures, while AFTRA had jurisdiction over the rest of the 21 hours of the daily broadcast clock. So when current SAG Board members bring up the, “We’ve got the Lion’s share of prime-time and movies,” argument, this is not only nothing new, but makes me wonder if they even comprehend the reason SAG & AFTRA board members crafted Phase One in the first place. The current SAG regime of elected officers has been trying every extra-legal tactic to jettison Phase One’s restrictions and have spent your dues $$$ only to learn from outside hired legal counsel in November that all of the above tactics were in fact unconstitutional. When Doug Allen & Alan Rosenberg regretfully informed the SAG board of this, howls of rage and indignation were heard from Wilshire to Warner Brothers.

I care that both my unions offer good minimums and pension & health plans and act like adults with the membership at heart. This pissing contest and "I'm top-o-show, I matter most, and “My-union-is-better-than-your-union," is such disingenuous bullshit. If they do matter most, why does SAG Board membershipfirst have to rely on background players for their political base? When SAG elected officers start playing oneupsmanship and brigandry on their own sister union -- I don't give a damn if it's coat-checkers and grass-mowers...these are unions, not Uzbek soccer teams.

If the current SAG leadership were sincere unionists, they would be in harmonious and single-minded relationship with AFTRA leadership over issues that affect us all, including joint bargaining, exhibition windows, P&H minimums, etc.

But what have they spent your dues $$$ doing for the last year??? Posturing, warring, sending out anti-AFTRA attack pieces, like aging frat & sorority brats throwing water balloons filled with piss at the house next door – all to try and wriggle out of the strictures of Phase One. That's not unionism. And neither is salivating over a Bold & Beautiful soap diva threatening to change t-shirts from AFTRA to SAG. Gosh, I wonder how much Hollywood SAG Board/membershipfirst scheming went into THAT move...THE LAST STRAW THAT DROVE AFTRA FROM THE ROOM AND MAY HAVE KILLED SAG's CHANCES OF GETTING A DECENT CONTRACT FOR ITS MEMBERS!!!! It gives the phrase "self-defeating" a whole new meaning. To say, "Oh, yes, we're bargaining jointly with AFTRA," and then lick their chops over an AFTRA soap opera decertifying is the two-facedness of the masques of tragedy. This isn't a game. It isn't spy-vs-spy in a magazine for thirteen year olds. It's union versus management. If only membershipfirst SAG Board officers fully understood that.

And after a month of SAG & AFTRA staff & members’ heroic efforts in Wages & Working Conditions meetings co-hosted by both unions, held to gather proposals for the upcoming AMPTP negotiations, SAG President Alan Rosenberg characterized it as “AFTRA glommed on to our proposals.” Now there’s a real partner.

You can't dance with a partner who repeatedly steps on your toes as a hostile act. You can't sing with a partner who suffers from Tourette’s. You can't act with a scene partner who constantly changes the lines of the script. AFTRA can not negotiate jointly with a "partner" who willfully engages in union raiding and union-busting activity.

Once we get through AMPTP negotiations we urge fellow SAG members to vote in fresh and different SAG Board leadership in the Fall of 2008 and be done with this brittle, hostile, poisonous, hyper-political obsessive-compulsive disorder chronically afflicting the membershipfirst contingent of the Hollywood SAG Board.

Working SAG & AFTRA members wish AFTRA Godspeed and best of luck to SAG. Remember, they both belong to us.

Working SAG & AFTRA member