even if skippy’s blog was eligible to win an oscar for best snark, we very most probably would not show up to accept it in february.
not because we wouldn’t be happy and proud to receive it. but because, more likely than not, there will be no oscar telecast next year, due to the actors’ strike.
as many of you know, skippy is a proud member of the screen actors guild. and it is with a heavy heart that he informs us that that union is thisclose to going on strike.
what’s that you say? didn’t the actors already go on strike earlier this year? alas, no. that was the writers’ guild, tho members of the actors unions did proudly support that labor action.
however, now the sag contract is up, and negotiations w/the producers have broken down after many, many, many attempts on our side to come to a reasonable conclusion.
our last resort was the use of a federal mediator to oversee the negotiations. that, alas, failed on the saturday before thanksgiving. now, the next step, which is currently happening, is for the board of the union to send out a strike referendum ballot for the membership to vote on. tho we are not actual prognosticators, we are guessing that the membership will approve a strike.
sag president alan rosenberg told the membership in a recent memo:
your leadership believes that we must be empowered with the real threat of a work stoppage in order to let management know that we are committed to protecting the future of all actors. we ask for your support, knowing that you have entrusted us to fight for your rights, and to protect your wages, working conditions and your health and pension benefits. we take your trust very, very seriously and will work towards reaching a fair agreement without a work stoppage.
management continues to apply its one-size-fits-all demands to sag actors. and we continue to stress that actors have unique, reasonable needs that are different, not better, but different, than writers, directors and crewmembers. so they are telling us to allow the unions who negotiated before sag to be our proxies. i wonder, would nbc ever let abc negotiate its license fees for them? of course not, but they think it’s perfectly reasonable to ask us to defer to the needs of other union workers and ignore what is critical to actors and their families.
it’s also curious that these global corporations are preaching to us about the bad economy. like it’s our fault. as middle-income actors we are the victims of corporate greed. we didn’t cause this turmoil.
the biggest contention in these current negotiations is the lack of residuals for new (read: the internet) media. it’s our learned opinion that within 5 years, the internet will be the delivery system of choice for both network television and new movies. and since the majority of actors make the bulk of their livings from residuals, a lack of same will effectively wipe out the careers and livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of middle-class americans.
sure, we can hear you saying, brad and angelina aren’t going to feel any pain if they don’t get their $567 residual every three months or so. trust us, skippy is no brad pitt (tho mrs. skippy likes to think so). like most of his peers, skippy is a middle class schlub who is lucky if he makes $30,000 in any given year from his chosen career.
management, in the form of the studios, would like to eliminate residuals altogether. from the official screen actors guild website:
we need to show management that we are willing to fight to preserve our ability to earn a living as union performers; otherwise, management will take that away from us. nearly half of our earnings as union performers come from residuals, but management wants us to allow them to make programs for the internet and other new media non-union and with no residuals. this means that as audiences shift from watching us on their televisions to watching us on their computers and cell phones our ability to earn a living will go away and future generations of actors may never be able to earn a living through their craft. this change will happen faster than you think…
management claims this bad deal is necessary because they need to “experiment” with new media and they claim they will renegotiate these terms with us in the future. we have already agreed to most of management’s new media terms, however, and have proposed, in the areas where we still disagree, extremely flexible terms for new media based on our successful low budget theatrical contracts and our nearly 800 made-for-new media contracts with independent producers. our terms will allow management the latitude to experiment using union actors.
and how can we believe that management will ever improve these new media terms when they still won’t improve the home video residual formula after 22 years? right now all the actors on a given cast share 1% of the revenue generated through dvd sales because of a formula we agreed to in 1986 when management needed to “experiment” with home video. in this negotiation, we have asked only that management at least make pension and health contributions on dvd residuals, rather than making us pay them ourselves out of our paltry 1%. they have refused even that!
the basic cable residual formula was also negotiated early in the history of that medium to reflect the then “experimental” status of basic cable programming and pays only a small fraction of network television residuals. it is now over 20 years later, 27% of all television ad dollars are now spent on basic cable, and the basic cable formula still pays only a small fraction of network television residuals. management simply does not have a history of ever ending their “experiments” and paying us fairly.
the reality is that management is opportunistic and they believe they can force these concessions on us because they believe we are weak and divided. we need your vote to prove them wrong.
skippy is not happy with the idea of going on strike in these troubled economic times. but the original contract first acquired by the founding members of the screen actors guild was back during the great depression, so we are heartened that others have faced worse problems and prevailed.
we would caution interested parties not to believe everything they read in the papers. wsj proffers that getting a ‘yes’ on the strike referendum may not be so easy:
a big issue is whether sag leadership will be able to persuade enough of its members to vote for strike authorization. the union’s ranks have long been divided across geographical and political lines, and many sag members are launching quiet campaigns against issuing a strike authorization. now, some union members are expressing strong skepticism at moving toward a walkout amid a global economic slump.
a moderate group within the union called unite for strength sent out a letter to supporters tuesday stating concerns that the guild hadn’t taken every action possible with regard to the mediation process. elsewhere, an online petition against a strike has gathered more than 17,000 signatures in fewer than two weeks, though it isn’t clear how many of the signatures are from union members.
we haven’t seen this petition ourselves, but skippy assures us that he was at the general membership meeting last october when the board announced that it had gotten unequivocal, if unofficial, approval from the members of the various branch thru-out the country in the weeks previous to the recent events. and, we assume the wall street journal has a vested interest in seeing management win.
in the coming days we will present more facts about what management wants the actors to give up, such as force majeur and the exact money amounts involved.
