AFTRA, AMPTP Negotiations Hit Stumbling Block

LOS ANGELES, May 20: The
American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) has said that
negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers
(AMPTP) are tackling some “challenging issues, and a resolution may not be
quick or easy.”

The AFTRA/AMPTP
negotiations for a new contract were expected to be completed fairly quickly,
after the artists union agreed to a Network Code earlier this year. The AMPTP
has said it will not resume negotiations with the Screen Actors Guild (SAG)
until after the AFTRA talks are completed. The discussions between the
producers and actors stalled earlier this month, with the AMPTP suspending
negotiations over SAG’s so-called “unreasonable demands.”

The AMPTP and AFTRA have
imposed a press blackout since discussions began May 7. Making her first
statement since the meetings began, Roberta Reardon, AFTRA’s national
president, sent an email to the union’s members yesterday. In it, she stated:
“We are confronting a number of challenging issues, and a resolution may not be
quick or easy. However, our discussions with the industry have been
professional and businesslike, and we remain focused on continuing negotiations
in this vein.”

The main hurdle is new
media. Reardon noted: “We’ve already delivered a strong message that performers
will not relinquish consent for excerpts in New Media, which would compromise
the integrity of members’ work, their reputations, or their employability in
scripted programming. The Negotiating Committee is also mindful of the hard
realities affecting the television business today—including audience
fragmentation, piracy, and the other complexities arising out of the
fast-evolving New Media landscape—and the impact this has on the wages
and job opportunities for working performers.”

She continued: “There are
no easy solutions, which means that our Negotiating Committee must be both
innovative and pragmatic, and the industry must also embrace a realistic
approach. Given the rapid changes happening around us, we cannot afford to
waste any time chasing rainbows. Our obligations to AFTRA members requires us
to be focused, firm and solutions-minded in order to effectively ensure that
working performers have a fair and realistic chance to participate in the
future of the television industry.”

Negotiations between the
two organizations resumed today.

—By Mansha Daswani