By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com
The SAG Missive Crisis
I was not in favor of WGA going out on strike when it did. I felt it was premature and poorly timed. Nothing about the settlement has changed my perspective on that. I feel that the AMPTP gave WGA almost exactly what they were always willing to give up. And WGA, by striking, gave AMPTP an extra gift that they may not have had to give AMPTP… force majeur and an excuse for in-house “layoffs.”
Truth is, we will never know for sure whether the strike was necessary. The contract WGA got, and DGA before them, is fine. It was not a great step forward… but it was not a step backwards either. The elephant in the room remains the $100 million-plus a year in DVD residuals in the life of this contract that came off the table and more than paid for any concession that AMPTP made, at least in the life of this contract. And the house cleaning opportunity made this 100 day strike a likely money maker for most AMPTP members.
That said… the growing wave of pre-contract civil war at SAG is making the WGA guys look like a bunch of unmitigated geniuses.
There are three fronts in the war.
1. We Don’t Want Another Strike This Year
2. SAG vs AFTRA
3. Qualified Voting
The biggest problem facing SAG leadership right now is trying to separate the three issues… a problem made harder by questions of who might be lurking behind some of the maneuvers. But first, a brief primer on the three fronts.
1. We Don’t Want Another Strike This Year
This is where I am willing, at least until proven otherwise, to give Clooney, DeNiro, Hanks, and Streep the benefit of the doubt in this situation. They took out this ad in Variety:
The does not speak to any of the major issues facing the Guild, internally or as a part of the AMPTP negotiation. It simply asks that there be forward motion.
One of the problems, again, with this situation is that the Guild’s internal issues – which may be much more dangerous than the AMPTP – have the most political members of the Guild wanting to open those issues to debate in the same period as the AMPTP contract is being negotiated. Why? Because that is the time when membership is most likely be willing to listen to the debate over these issues.
Having had the chance to speak to Clooney about the WGA strike in November, he was pretty confident that the town would be shut down until the end of summer. That is not the case. And I am completely willing to believe that he simply wanted to take a position that the tone that precipitated the WGA strike should not overtake SAG.
However, there are a few problems with this ad.
A) Three of the four signers have not-insignificant lives as producers of films and television, not just actors. Streep seems the odd person out in this group and I am not sure what the story with that is, but Clooney, Hanks, and DeNiro can all be reasonably questioned about motive as regards their work as producers. Perhaps the answer is that they are not motivated by that at all. Like I say, I’d like to think the best of all three men. But they opened themselves up to the charge by being in such a small group of signers while producing enough product annually to disallow anyone from shrugging off accusations by calling them “vanity producers.”
B) Why do a public ad? My answer, in their defense, is that the media has no obligation – or history – of running people’s words unencumbered of the editor’s and reporter’s ideas. And I doubt any of them wanted to bolster Press Release Nikki. (But Hanks and Clooney did sign a letter to the LAT Op-Ed section, effectively going public without an ad.)
On the other hand, it is not unfair to worry that a public display of powerful SAG members telling the SAG leadership what to do this way – whether there have or have not been private meetings in the past – weakens SAG’s negotiating position.
And the backlash, which has been going on since the ad ran, is not insignificant. It is a rather arrogant act for four people at the top of the food chain to buy ad space to tell the union leadership how to conduct union business… even though I agree with the sentiment! But was that ad really inclusive of the rest of membership, many of whom are in agreement? It has the earmarks of an e-mail written in ALL CAPS by your boss.
C) Within a day of the ad running in the trades, rumors that former SAG leaders Melissa Gilbert and Mike Farrell were leading this campaign, even though their fingerprints were not on it in any apparent way. Soon thereafter, this alleged e-mail was printed on SAGWatchdog.com (emphases added by the website):
Click Here For The Letter Via Pop-Up
Of course, all SAG members have the inherent right to back whatever position they like. But the highly contentious era of Gilbert/Farrell takes the fight right back to #2…
2. SAG vs AFTRA
It was Melissa Gilbert’s SAG leadership group that last pushed for and failed to achieve a merger with AFTRA. Also supporting that effort publicly were Clooney and Hanks.
On February 2, AFTRA decided to split off in their negotiations with AMPTP, a working arrangement that had been in place since 1981, and to negotiate for AFTRA alone, earlier than SAG anticipated starting their negotiations.
How big a problem is this?
Well, the first problem is that an AFTRA deal being done before a SAG deal would not only undermine SAG negotiations, but would theoretically end the threat of a SAG strike by putting a substantial number of actors back to work under AFTRA contracts… contracts which would obviously be pursued vigorously for new projects by producers looking to avoid the threat of a SAG strike.
SAG has 120,000 members to AFTRA’s 70,000. SAG contracts reportedly generate 90% of the overall income for actors. Yet, the deal, known as Phase One, set up a 50/50 position in negotiations between the two unions.
The problem is magnified significantly by some serious contract creep by AFTRA, slowly but steadily expanding their jurisdiction to cover television shows (and one movie, so far) that have traditionally been under SAG’s jurisdiction. The area of greatest incursion has been cable television programming. The rule in the past was that scripted dramatic and comedy shows were under SAG with AFTRA covering news, live programs, talk shows, radio, etc.
AFTRA, according to a variety of sources, is offering contracts to producers that are more attractive to producers, offering significant breaks on residuals, health and welfare payments, day-to-day working rules, etc, on shows that would traditionally not be under AFTRA’s jurisdiction at all. In fact, AFTRA covered no scripted series on cable until 2001. And now they are in full out competition with SAG for deals.
Moreover, the argument from AFTRA leadership seems to be that they are doing SAG members a favor by doing inferior deals with producers because with the growth of original cable programming, SAG’s demands would keep too many players out of the game.
But how can a union maintain its standards if their actors can be hired for less (about 50% of SAG’s membership are also AFTRA members and can work shows under either union’s contract) simply by producers doing the deal with one union instead of the other? If SAG members can work under AFTRA deals on cable and AFTRA cuts more generous deals, why would any producer work with SAG?
Ironically, we just went through a strike where the union tried a similar tactic, giving competitive advantage to companies that would sign a deal with WGA, to crack AMPTP. The strike didn’t go on long enough for it to have a major impact. But if the strike was six months longer, is there a Leno writer, for instance, who would not have agreed to go to work for Letterman if it meant they could go back to work? Loyalty is one thing… money is another.
The bottom line is that AFTRA has become a real threat to SAG. They haven’t crack network television yet and maybe they never will. But on Basic Cable, there is no reason or suggestion of any other intent keeping AFTRA from taking over the entire arena, as long as SAG allows it, passively or not. Basic Cable is a growing market while Network Television continues to slide. More and more actors will, if things continue as they are, will pay the price for AFTRA’s continuing incursion.
The troubles of SAG’s membership are almost all in the middle class. The 65% that barely works or doesn’t work are suffering, but are beyond direct help by the union. A small percentage of actors make enough money and wield enough power for the union’s help to be unneeded in most things. (This would, of course, change without a strong union.) And that 30% or so in the middle… they are suffering. $10,000, $20,000, $30,000 a year in residuals and payments to Health & Welfare to qualify for insurance are a bread & butter issue in that group. And AFTRA seems to be taking enough extra ounces of flesh to hurt some badly already.
3. Qualified Voting
Throw another head spinner into the mix and you have a real hootenanny.
The basic notion here is that two-thirds of SAG members don’t work or earn under $1000 a year and that this majority has too much power, as voters, over the lives of the third of the membership (more like 15%, really, as the $7500 a year threshold is only 20%) that are really “working actors.” Therefore, they should not be allowed to vote on “major contracts.”
There is also the perception, as there was leading up to the WGA strike, that out of work union members are significantly more interested in striking than working members. I do believe that to be true in the WGA situation… but I also know that the Negotiating Committee that recommended the strike when they did was full of busy writers and no one tricked them into making the recommendation, so the logic doesn’t really follow.
On the flip side, others argue that people who qualified for SAG membership are actors, whether fresh off the boat and of long standing and it is at the core of the idea of having a union that they all have a vote.
There is no indication that Clooney or Hanks (who signed a letter that ran in the LA Times) or DeNiro or Streep (who didn’t) are involved with the Qualified Voting movement. There is no indication that Gilbert or Farrell are behind Qualified Voting.
SO…
That is the three-headed monster.
The odd irony is that, unlike WGA, the AMPTP is really the least of SAG’s problems. With WGA and DGA signed, the historic use of two unions as the foundation for the third will continue, fairly or otherwise. Of course, SAG will have many details that are uniquely their own. And they will be negotiated pretty quickly unless true insanity somehow prevails. (This is the same position I took regarding the WGA strike as soon as the DGA deal closed. There were and are good points and bad points to the deal, but it is not a terribly unique deal historically.)
The Qualified Membership issue is really a non-starter. As other have pointed out, it would require a constitutional amendment, which would require a full vote of the union, which would ask people to vote against their right to vote. Not happening.
The AFTRA thing is, it seems, a real threat. And only SAG can police its future.
But right now, it all feels like chaos… and I don’t know who that could benefit… other than Hollywood’s Original One Woman Strike Queen.
