AFTRA Members Ratify New Contract

LOS ANGELES, July 9: A new three-year prime-time TV contract
for the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) has been
approved by the union’s 70,000 members by a 62.4-percent margin.

“Today’s vote reflects the ability of AFTRA members to
recognize a solid contract when they see it,” said Roberta Reardon, the
national president of AFTRA, on the new deal with the Alliance of Motion
Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP). “Despite an unprecedented disinformation
campaign aimed at interfering with our ratification process, a majority of
members ultimately focused on what mattered—the obvious merits of a labor
agreement that contains substantial gains for every category of performer in
both traditional and new media.”

Reardon addressed the controversial ratification process,
during which time the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) led a campaign to encourage
AFTRA members to reject the deal, which the 120,000-member SAG union says does
not go far enough in addressing actors’ concerns. To address the frayed
relations between the two unions, Reardon announced several new AFTRA
initiatives, including a summit with leading actors, performers and union
leaders “to engage in a thoughtful, constructive discussion of how we can
achieve unity among performers—and ultimately, if feasible, merger of the
performers’ unions.” Reardon noted that AFTRA is also reaching out to the
leadership of the AFL-CIO AEMI ICC unions, the Directors Guild, the Writers
Guild and others in the labor community “to come together well in advance of
the next round of contract negotiations to explore ways of maximizing the
leverage of entertainment industry workers.”

AFTRA contracts cover more than 70 percent of the
programming hours on major network TV. Its prime-time shows include Rules of
Engagement, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Flight of the Conchords, Reaper and the new 90210.

Following news of the ratified contract, Alan Rosenberg,
SAG’s national president, issued a statement noting that the 37.6 percent of
members who rejected the contract “responded to our education and outreach
campaign and voted against the inadequate AFTRA agreement. We knew AFTRA would
appeal to its many AFTRA-only members, who are news people, sportscasters and
DJs, to pass the tentative agreement covering acting jobs.”

Rosenberg continued: “Screen Actors Guild is the actors
union with more than 95 percent of the work under this contract, jurisdiction
over all motion pictures, and more than $4 billion dollars in member earnings
under the SAG agreement over just the last three years.”

SAG says it is “dedicated to achieving a fair TV/theatrical
contract for SAG members as soon as possible. The SAG national negotiating
committee anticipates an equal effort and commitment by the employers and their
representatives to achieve this goal.”

The AMPTP, meanwhile, said it hopes that the AFTRA
ratification “demonstrates to SAG’s Hollywood leadership that there is support
for the new economic relationships we have built with writers, directors and
actors—and not much support for a strike, whether de facto or real…We hope that SAG’s Hollywood leadership will
allow SAG members to vote on AMPTP’s final offer—which would give SAG
members more than $250 million in additional compensation and important
new-media rights.”

SAG is set to issue a response to the AMPTP’s last offer on
Thursday afternoon.

—By Mansha Daswani