SAG, AFTRA Feud Continues

LOS ANGELES, June 9: The
Screen Actors Guild (SAG) has taken issue with the deal inked between the
American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) and the Alliance of
Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), noting that there are still a
number of “outstanding issues” to be addressed.

SAG’s negotiations with
the producers for a new contract for its nearly 120,000 members resumed today.
Among the issues SAG says were not covered in the AFTRA deal are improvements
for working actor compensation that exceed cost-of-living increases. SAG also
wants guild coverage and residuals for all original new-media programs. SAG’s
president, Alan Rosenberg, says: “Our employers should not have the right to
produce non-union new-media programming under our contract. We continue to
fight hard to preserve residuals for actors now and in the future.”

Furthermore, SAG wants its
members to have the right of consent and have compensation for scripted product
placement “in which an actor extols the virtues of a product or service.” SAG
is also negotiating for a 15-percent increase in DVD residual payments.

“These are examples of
priorities for actors that were not achieved in the AFTRA deal,” Rosenberg
said.

The AFTRA contract is being
sent to the organization’s members for ratification this month, after
“overwhelming” approval by its leadership. The tentative three-year deal was
announced at the end of last month.

“The working performers on
the AFTRA negotiating committee worked hard to craft a new AFTRA agreement for
prime-time television that makes
sense for all performers,” said AFTRA’s national president, Roberta Reardon.
“AFTRA members now have the opportunity to vote ‘yes’ for higher pay, improved
working conditions and continued right of consent for use of excerpts in new
media.”

SAG had called on AFTRA’s
leadership to delay ratification of the new contract until after it had
concluded its own negotiations. “We believe that the tentative AFTRA deal and
its pending ratification—coming as it does within several days of SAG’s
June 30 contract deadline—is a distraction that the employers are using
to delay significant progress in our negotiations,” Rosenberg said.

AFTRA’s board unanimously
rejected the SAG request for a delay. Reardon and Kim Roberts Hedgpeth, the
national executive director, said in a statement: “In our view, delaying this
process would not be in the best interest of our members. Nor do we believe
there is anything about AFTRA’s ratification process that would ‘distract’
either SAG or the industry from good faith negotiations, or in any way be
‘interfering’ with the guild’s negotiations with the AMPTP. In any event, given
our timeline, by the time the results of our ratification vote are announced,
SAG will have been back at the table with the employers for more than five
weeks. We believe this provides sufficient time to allow SAG and the AMPTP to
focus on negotiations and hopefully reach a mutually satisfactory conclusion.”

SAG is also said to be
calling on its members who also belong to AFTRA to reject the deal. “We are
reserving judgment about the accuracy of statements that SAG elected leaders
and staff intend to undermine the merits of our members’ tentative agreement
and disrupt our ratification process,” Reardon and Hedgpeth continued. “Such
unprecedented interference in the internal affairs of another union is the
antithesis of good unionism. We expect that if SAG really is concerned about
improving wages and working conditions for performers in the entertainment
industry, its efforts and resources will be directed towards negotiating a good
agreement for SAG members, not to attempting to undo our efforts to serve AFTRA
members. We hope it will not be necessary to pursue legal remedies, but be
aware that we would view any attempt by SAG or its leadership to undermine or
interfere with our ratification process as a violation of both the law and the
AFL-CIO Constitution.”

SAG is holding a
“Solidarity Rally” in Los Angeles today at its headquarters as it resumes talks
with the AMPTP.

—By Mansha Daswani