SAG stars in new production of 'It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World'

For years, people in Hollywood have casually dismissed the Screen Actors Guild as the craziest union in creation. Apparently they weren't exaggerating. As my colleague Richard Verrier has reported, after getting nowhere during months of on-again, off-again talks with the studios, SAG has now opted to pursue a strike authorization vote from its 120,000 members.  (The union has been working without a contract since June 30.) If this is meant as some kind of threat designed to drag the studios back to the negotiating table, SAG is even more deluded than anyone believed possible.

SAG's goal is pretty obvious. The guild hopes that by getting a big strike mandate from its membership--a strike referendum requires 75% approval from members who cast ballots--it can use the threat of a disruption of the Academy Awards to force studios to negotiate a better deal. But according to most insiders I have spoken to, no one takes the threat seriously--they don't believe the strike will happen. Why not?

1) As James Carville once famously said: It's the economy, stupid. As it is, most SAG members don't work regularly, at least not at acting. They've got real jobs, whether it's at Starbucks, waiting tables, doing construction, teaching or running small businesses. Whatever the gig, they know--like the rest of us know--that the economy is in the toilet. No one wants to risk losing the jobs they have that actually pay the bills. So fewer people have the pie-in-the-sky attitude that usually fuels SAG strike votes from all those members who aren't working TV or film jobs. Normally, they'd say, What have I got to lose by a strike? I'm not working anyway. But too many members are clinging to their side jobs, which has a sobering effect on anyone considering the value of a misguided strike.

2) I was a vocal supporter of the Writers Guild strike because I felt they were in the right. They weren't asking for the moon, and the studios, having boasted for so long about their profitability, had the money to give. But in the midst of a dire economic crisis, SAG is asking for concessions that no other union got in their negotiations last winter. They have been standing firm in seeking an increase in actor residuals from DVD sales, a demand that the studios will never agree to. It's foolhardy, not to mention unrealistic, to expect that SAG members will join the guild leadership in what is obviously a kamikaze mission.

3) The WGA was united. SAG is divided. On one flank, it has AFTRA, a more conservative sister guild that is quietly poised to recruit more actors and gain more clout for future negotiations. On the other flank, it has a group of actors, endorsed by such respected, high-profile SAG members as Tom Hanks, Alec Baldwin and Sally Field, who've made it clear that they want nothing to do with a suicidal strike in the midst of hard times. There are even more stars who haven't issued public declarations for the dissidents who privately support their cause. If necessary, the stars will exercise their clout, blitzing members with reminders of the folly of a showdown with the studios.

4) When the WGA went out on strike, there was a true sense of solidarity with other guilds, notably SAG, based on the feeling that the studios had pushed their hand too far. In early negotiations, it looked like what the studios really wanted was a rollback in residuals and other guild benefits. The WGA had the high moral ground. SAG today doesn't have similar support. The Writers Guild will surely offer soothing words of solidarity, but the true believers aren't there this time around. SAG will have to go it alone. But timing is everything. And you don't have to read a newspaper or watch TV to know that the timing for a Hollywood actors strike couldn't be worse. The WGA got tons of support from the media, not to mention regular Joes who identified with their cause. But with more people losing their jobs every day, SAG is about to discover that most people will view them as rebels without a cause.

Comments

[william alonso]

There is never a good time to strike ! The only thing worse than a strike is a contract you can't live with ! Not all actors have so called other jobs so i aspire to work other than background gigs.And if you don't mind i want to be paid for it as well, each and everytime it is seen unless i say so.If you don't value your labor who will ...wall street ?Jobs with justice I'll be there !

[chance wolf]

With respect to Mr. Alonso and his previous comment, he's a tiny, tiny part of a HUGE industry which is sitting on its hands and has been for months due too this continuing instability which began with the WGA folks, sputtered through the DGA renegotiation -- and now drags on and on because SAG is clearly governed by the lunatic fringe. The SAG leadership continuing to push a strike agenda might as well head off and join Gary Busey in his high profile TV rehab because the reality disconnect is similarly complete.

Does SAG really believe that the best course of action is hold an America's Greediest Entity competition with the studios while all the folks playing along at home in cast, crew and supplier categories watch their businesses fail, their houses get repossessed, and their fridges empty? Is SAG perfectly happy with destroying the very industry they want a bigger piece of? That's what's happening. Right now. Look out a window.

SAG's responsibility is to its members, which is why they pay dues. The leaders KNOW they haven't the 75% strike mandate they need, but rather than do something effective on behalf of the industry at large and its members specifically, they simply cast themselves as Nero and fiddle happily as Rome burns around them.

SAG exists as a part of a larger whole. The sooner SAG leadership works that out, the faster everyone will get back to work.

[TheWatcher]

Ask a UAW member how secure he feels these days with all his high-priced contract costs. Ask a non-actor how secure he feels these days in a job he has had for 15 years. Ask a Scale-Paid Actor or a Background Actor if he wants to push and push and push for a creme-de-la-creme contract and not work for 6 months or if he would rather work and pay some bills and pump his resume and experience. Ask that same Actor whether he wants to walk a line for SAG or get a paycheck on an AFTRA production. SAG needs to look at the reality of life in this century and realize that they will become impotent at best and irrelevent at worst if they continue to insist that they can rewrite the economic situation just because they want to.

[Julie S]

SAG is already experiencing a backlash in case they don't know it yet. Almost 13,000 people have signed a petition(in only 4 days!) asking them not to strike right now. Most of these people are support crew in the industry, but many are SAG members who agree this is a terrible economic climate for a strike. As people have said on the petition, if SAG strikes, many of us will be on the picket lines as well... on the opposite side of the street picketing them. We'll have nothing to lose as that will be where we will be living if a strike goes through. GROW up SAG and read a newspaper for a change. The world is in dire straights and now is not the time to demand more when the rest of the world are tightening their belts. For those interested in supporting the petition, here's the link:

www.petitiononline.com/DealNow/petition.html

[Dana Kaminski]

I find this awfully article condescending, demeaning, and insulting. With a shocking entitlement to do so.

1. The SAG goal: your "translation" denotes an ugly bias. Interesting that you would be aware that actors don't get paid enough to live on earnings, in one sentence, and you use that to make a point about the economy.
2. Yeah, actors are aware that there is a bad economy. Have you ever not asked for your salary because of what was happening in the country's economy?

Why do you demand that of actors? Why do you demand that you have your Academy Awards over actors getting paid for working? Hm?
Anyway, if the strike does begin, and the AMPTP decides to pay actors fairly, then you will still have your Academy Awards.

Actors really are concerned about their future in this business, which is tenuous. And their careers. And their families. And this overall notion, and entitlement, that actors should work for free.

"Terrible economic time for a strike"? That will give it more power, perhaps, and then maybe the studios will include the actors in their plans, and allow the entire artform to survive, in this business. I hope.

The middle class actor is gone, and so will the profession. Unless actors get paid. Unless a set point is started now, in an exploding entertainment area. The future is hard to foretell, but not by the studios...they already know the direction they are going, and it's to the internet.

I am not even acting anymore, but I still am incensed at the free-flowing disrespect that I read everyday, by some journalist or another.
The other thing I see is lack of information--do you even REALLY know what the STRIKE is about??? Are you aware of what the union is asking for?

I believe that actors deserve to be paid, and paid more than they do. I ESPECIALLY know, that the studios have made very extensive plans, and invested heavily in the internet.
Do your homework, it's easily found on the internet--all the studio heads are telling their stockholders that the studios have a strong future in the "NEW MEDIA" and that they have invested much money. They don't do so, without careful and strategic numbers and plans.

Their plans don't include paying actors.
WHY?
Why are they fighting so hard, not to have to?
Not to set a precedent, on paying talent on the net?
They aren't even PAYING the writers, with the terms they settled their strike on.

Why is it that you choose to publish a piece that is actor-bashing? Vitriolic? To a whole group, generaliizing, with ugliness?
Perhaps, with a little bit more research, and a lttle more empathy, you'll see that actors are people.
(Sometime "playa-hating" doesn't allow empathy...?)
The people that are actors really should be paid for their work. Period. And they should be able to live off of that money. No matter what everyone else's economy is.

Sorry to be so harsh in tone, but I think the tone of your article denoted an entitlement, to diminish and degrade...
And outright insult. ("stupid" "crazy" "suicidal") Why is that okay? Because bias, or personal attack, is okay, for certain groups that you view as the lesser ones?
No wonder, as you state, there isn't support from the media...
Personally, how would you feel if I framed your group that way? (No I don't know you, or any group you may identify with.)

Certain specific points that you make require too much depth to answer here, but I will absolutely do so on my blog, and I would ask you to please check in there, because I do believe that you are writing with such a bias, that you discredit yourself.
And that you are doing an injustice to the actors that really have looked at this carefully, intelligently, and thoroughly.

I think you are way off, and I think it's wrong, and really ugly.
Sorry.
And I think that this town revolves on fear; and no one wants to speak up to and against the powers that be. That's why Alan Rosenberg is labeled "aggressive", simply for being "stand up" and being a real representative.

Seriously, when you talk about people having to work in Starbucks, to support their career, don't you see the lack of correlation, to describe them as "greedy"? (Bias never has logic, I know...I am a published author, and researcher, on that topic.)

And to complain about how it may affect the awards show?

That sounds awfully similar to...Let them eat cake.

[SAG deal]

The studios have forced SAG into a corner and SAG is about to bite back.
The congloms better think about the destruction they are about to rain down on the average industry worker and stop sticking to thier closed eyes and closed minded ideals. The studios are going to lose a fortune and thier won't be a bail plan from the Feds for them. Open your eyes and treat SAG fairly or everyone will lose.

[Mann Arbeiter]

The SAG negotiating committee is dominated by membershipfirst activists -- actors whose actual working days are so far in the past, objects are NOT larger than they appear. They have nothing to lose except their SAG neg comm seats. Thus their suicidal, ill-informed, narcissistic, ruse. Kids on the schoolyard sometimes have a hard time sharing. Membershipfirsters on committees have always had that problem. Union negotiations are always about compromise and leaving table with a deal that's a little less than anathema for both sides. August '09, SAG actors must vote these sociopaths off the SAG board for good, otherwise you can say goodbye to union acting jobs forever.

[mheister]

Mr. Goldstein doesn't seem to have done his homework.

SAG is united, and is very likely to meet the 75% threshold, specifically because President Rosenberg has done the hard work of coalition-building. Membership First and Unite for Strength members together rejected the AMPTP's so-called last best final offer and voted together to send a strike authorization request to the membership.

It is not SAG's goal ultimately to bring the AMPTP back to the bargaining table. SAG's tried that. The AMPTP doesn't want to bargain in good faith. So SAG has to show it's willing to use the single most powerful weapon in any union's arsenal - the ability to withhold union labor from signatory companies.

The state of the economy is of very limited relevance at best to the current situation. These negotiations began long before the economy started turning south, and the downward turn has had relatively little impact on the moguls. The cutbacks they've ordered thus far have been token at best. Two percent? Please. And that wasn't ordered to curb losses; it was to continue to shore up profits. The entertainment industry has typically fared well during rough economic times, and the current downturn will be no exception.

I hasten to add that SAG was formed, and took its first labor actions, during the Great Depression. Actors are used to hanging tough for labor rights during tough times.

Mr. Goldstein also seems to think nothing real is at stake for actors in this. Nothing could be further from the truth. As his own newspaper knows, people are turning away from traditional media and towards new media for their news and entertainment. The moguls are deep into the process of migrating essentially all of their content delivery to the Internet. This matters to all of the creative guilds because the moguls are insisting on lower payouts, a lower residual structure, and low-budget non-union productions for new media. They know full well that traditional media will be dead in just a few years, and they want the lower new media rates to be the new industry standard when they've completed this migration process.

The is no way to overemphasize the importance of the new media exemption the moguls want so badly. When it suits them, the moguls speak of precedents and pattern bargaining, but what they want to do with the new media exemption is break a precedent set and adhered to more than seven decades ago. All principal work for union signatories must be union work, at any budget level, period.

What the AMPTP is pushing hard for, in essence, is a HUGE rollback of wages, compensation, and a range of other hard-won rights.

In fairness to Mr. Goldstein, he does work for a company that relies heavily on ad dollars from the moguls. We should not be offended if he carries some water for them.

[No Strike]

To Julie S. --- Let me tell ya - there are TONS of SAG members signatures on that petition. Most of us are not the lunatic fringe our NegComm obviously is.

I found that petition on Thankgiving. As 11 year SAG member all I want to do is get back to WORK. We will NEVER make up the money we've already lost in this psuedo-strike currently in effect. It's also painfully obvious that a strike at this time and in this economic climate with be the final death blow to a Guild that already gasping it's last with all the mis-steps in this years contract negotiations.

I sent a link to that petition to every SAG member and every other other person in the entertainment business and I personally know hundreds of people that have signed in the last 2 days. No most of us SAG members are NOT the self-absorbed nutcases our leaderships is and as long as SAG counts the votes honestly, it's not likely they will get anywhere near the needed 75%

[HillBilly]

We keep hearing SAG say how this negotiation is all about the everyday working actor so being a crew member intimate with the working of the town, actors and the challenges they face, I have a simple fix to this contract that will make 99.9 percent of the everyday 'working' actors happy (and by that I mean all the waiters and temps of this great city.)

We know there is a great disparity going on here for actors and it needs to be addressed. The disparity is -- other actors. Or stars if you will. So here's the fix:

In the new contract, SAG should cap an actor's fee at $1 million dollars per picture for a feature and $25,000 per episode for television.

Any amount above that (the other $19 million per picture per 'star' and tens of thousands per episodes for 'stars' in episodic) and residuals should go back to SAG to pay the other actors (the co-stars and day players) on the projects a decent wage and decent residuals, and then divvy up the rest for the other unemployed actors and fund their pensions. It's all about Union right? And sharing and making sure everyone gets a piece. And a million a year is livable right? And that's only if you do one picture. And all 119,999 other 'working' actors could get by.

And while they're at it 1. They could put in a clause that for every minute an actor is late to the studio or location, they give up five times that in their turnaround for the next day. This would address the half-ass work ethic most actors have who show up habitually late, then stumble into hair make-up when they damn well please and keep the whole company waiting -- while any other crew member (who gets 9 hours turnaround many days and has to park in a lot and shuttle to set while SAG actors get 12 hours everyday -- and get to park by their cozy little trailer 'cause God forbid if they have to be inconvenienced) would be fired for the same action.

2. For every time an actor whines and/or complains about a. their trailer/room, b. why their call time was so early c. why they have to sit around and wait while someone else's scene is shot before theirs or d. why were they called to the set if the camera wasn't 1000% ready and everyone isn't standing by fawning and waiting for their presence and/or d. asks if they can go home instead of waiting until their next scene and/or e. complains about what ever random thing they find to complain about or f. asks what's taking so long -- they forfeit 10 % of their pay or agree to be bitch-slapped by a random grip selected by lottery.

3. Any time an actor doesn't come out of his/her trailer in less than 60 seconds after being told the set is ready for them or remains on his/her cell phone chatting or playing with their little yippy dog that for some reason they feel compelled to bring to set and press upon everyone, or laughing and giggling with their slightly superior and mostly annoying friends or continuing to smoke their cigarettes, assistant directors will be authorized to first beat, then physically drag the actor from his/her trailer and/or take the cell phone and/or cigarette (or both) and shove them up the actor, or all of the above, at the assistant director's discretion and with the help of one or more Teamsters if the situation warrants. (Dogs and friends will remain unharmed, at least for the first offense, and if they remain quiet.)

That's a contract I think the creative community and working crews could sign off on and we could all avoid a really ugly strike.