Well there goes Phase One, AFTRA votes to go it alone...

Well there you have it.
Hollywood Reporter is reporting (it's what they do) that AFTRA will be negotiating contracts on its own from now on.
i agree with comments that this move doesn't seem to be for the benefit of the actors involved with both guilds, but political.
SAG has been making A LOT of noise of late, but recently been backing off, even pulling plans to institute bloc voting and pressuring AFTRA for a more accurately representative split at the bargaining table.
With upcoming contract renegotiations, it leads me to think AFTRA is making a play for AFTRA contracts to be the preferred contracts. Why wouldn't actors want a unified front at the negotiating table? Much like previous contracts (video games for example) I think we'll see a guild ready to expend as much energy negotiating with producers as it will be expending in undercutting rival guilds.

Could we be witnessing the beginning of buy out contracts? This would worry me as both guilds are notorious for setting ridiculous minimums for scale. Combine that with losing residuals, and I just have to wonder how much further we can de-value performance...

Story @ Hollywood Reporter

SAG Watchdog: Aftra Killing Residuals?

someaudioguy some audio guy AFTRA, SAG, Negotiations, Contracts, Phase One, Rogue

Tensions between SAG and AFTRA heating up again?

Just sent in to me from a friend.
It looks like SAG and AFTRA will be feuding again.
A concerned group of SAG actors have posted a petition to the Screen Actors Guild Board, and it has collected almost 400 signatures since December 2nd.

The concern:

To the financial detriment of actors, The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists is undercutting Screen Actors Guild contracts by offering inferior wages and benefits in jurisdictions that traditionally belong to Screen Actors Guild.

The petition:

Protecting Actors

Resolution to Screen Actors Guild Board of Directors

WHEREAS a steep price has been paid by actors who came before us to acquire residuals and the Pension & Health benefits that have become the lifeblood of actors, and a steep price is being paid now by the writers to prevent free exhibition days and to gain a fair compensation in the continued exploitation of creative work;

And WHEREAS our Phase One collective bargaining partner, AFTRA, is giving away what the writers are currently on strike to secure, (AFTRA gave away simultaneous internet streaming, 10-20 play days on cable in the first year, multiple plays per day, no residuals on any of these plays and thus no pension and health benefits);

And WHEREAS, by federally authorized elections, these shows are not AFTRA’s jurisdiction but are Screen Actors Guild’s and have been raided from S.A.G. where residuals and Pension & Health benefits would have been paid;

And WHEREAS in 2002, without a membership referendum, the AFTRA National Board gave the Association of Talent Agents (ATA) financial interest in exchange for $500,000; the same package that was rejected by a vote of the S.A.G. membership;

And WHEREAS we have such fundamental differences with regard to residuals, Pension & Health benefits, the proper place of agents in their representation of actors, and the participation of members in decisions critical to their welfare;

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that Screen Actors Guild take every measure available to enforce its jurisdiction up to and including taking a vote of actors to determine who they want to represent them in collective bargaining agreements in all aspects of their work.

I don't want to pick sides here, but I will say that I find it unpleasant to have two guilds divided over the same space. SAG and AFTRA share some forty thousand members, and any time a contract is up, they spend more energy trying to undercut each other than working out a fair deal with production. As long as this bargaining position is maintained, actors will never have true "collective" bargaining, and the contracts negotiated will continue to work towards the actor's detriment. Either there needs to be a clearer division between who gets what, or the two guilds need to merge.

This is of course easier said than done...

Read the rest of the petition here.

Thanks David!

AFTRA, SAG act like foes

AFTRA, SAG ACT like foes?

I think they're getting pretty close to just being foes.
A quick follow up to my Union mega-post a couple days ago, more news about the simmering hostility between these organizations is surfacing over at Hollywood Reporter.

"On Saturday, the SAG national board voted to keep its so-called Phase
One relationship with AFTRA in place, giving its smaller sister union
50-50 representation on negotiating committees like one to be formed
for film and TV contract talks. The current SAG-AFTRA pact with the
Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers is set to expire
June 30, and negotiations on a new agreement are expected sometime
after Jan. 1.
But the vote to affirm Phase One came with a
controversial addendum suggesting SAG will seek to change how voting is
conducted on the negotiating committee, sources said. Under bloc
voting, SAG members on the committee first would vote among themselves,
and positions favored by a majority of that group would be lodged as a
unanimous vote by all SAG committee members.

In their letter, Reardon and AFTRA national executive
director Kim Roberts Hedgpeth opposed bloc voting on grounds that it
would "create a structure of two separate negotiating committees that
Phase One was created to avoid."
The AFTRA leaders said they were responding to news
accounts of SAG board actions and would make no assumptions pending a
SAG response.
"The bloc voting described by the trade press is of
course completely antithetical to the history and purpose of Phase One
and as a practical matter could result in unwieldy deadlocks during
negotiations," the AFTRA officials wrote.
Hedgpeth said it would be premature to speculate on how AFTRA might respond if SAG proceeds with its bloc voting plan."

Not really all that surprising that AFTRA wouldn't be too happy about this. It's really tricky. The radical in me thinks the time for two unions is over (and would come with the added benefit of reducing the amount of dues 40,000 actors would have to pay being members of both), but the realist in me would be content to have stricter separation over what union handles what job. The fact that a game, for example, could be either SAG OR AFTRA is unacceptable.
It's looking to me like the unions are going to lose yet another round to production due to in-fighting and chest-thumping...


Read the rest here!

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SAG and AFTRA News for August 1st: Good, Bad, and Ugly

A bunch of stories to link out here.

SAG REAFFIRMS 'PHASE ONE' WITH AFTRA (Hollywood Reporter)

Why they would do this I dont know. Basically 'Phase One' means that at negotiations SAG and AFTRA have an equal number of seats at the table. I think this is ... well ... dumb. SAG has a lot more members. If SAG has twice as many members, they should have twice as many seats (though I think the actual difference is 10 to 7 in SAG's favor).
I did find this interesting though:

"Now here's the catch, The final, amended wording of the resolution stated a desire to tinker with how Phase One is implemented during negotiations. Specifically, SAG may try to implement so-called bloc voting on the negotiating committee, sources said. Representation still would be apportioned 50-50, but SAG votes would automatically be counted as a unanimous bloc in favor of whatever position is carried by a majority of SAG reps on the committee. "So if, say, eight SAG committee members want to vote for a position and two are against, through bloc-voting all 10 votes would count as being for the position," a labor community insider explained."

Variety also has a quick write up of the same situation HERE.

AFTRA FORGES ALLIANCE WITH IATSE (Hollywood Reporter)

Interesting development here. With SAG circling the wagons, hoping into bed with the WGA and DGA, and working really hard against Fi-Cores, it looks like AFTRA is trying to reach out to other unions also:

"It grows out of our desire to strike strategic alliances with a large number of entertainment unions," AFTRA spokesman John Hinrichs said of the IATSE announcement. "We have worked with IATSE in the past on a number of ventures, (and) what this says is that we're gong to sit down to figure out ways of working together to benefit our members on a continuing basis."Hinrichs added, "There are no plans at this point to merge."

AFTRA and IATSE?


And lastly:

SCREEN ACTORS GUILD MAY PUSH FOR STRIKE (ASSOCIATED CONTENT)

'Nuff said yeah?

"Other unions, like the Screen Actors Guild have become increasingly concerned at the prospects of a work stoppage sometime within the next year driven by unhappy members that feel they've been treated unfairly by the studios. While SAG's contract doesn't officially expire until July of 2008, and while the Writers Guild expires later this fall, they appear to have many common goals and fears: a general labor strike.
Between the big three, the WGA is considered to be the most militant of the guilds, that is to say they are the most willing to strike if several issues that have been simmering on the back burner since as far back as the 1980s are not addressed this time around, while the Directors Guild of America has been the most pacifist, having never struck in their entire existence.
All three unions are particularly frustrated over the studio's refusal change the residual formula for DVDs, and at least for the WGA, their refusal to even negotiate a new formula for the emerging download and streaming market.
The Screen Actors Guild jointly negotiates its television contract with American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA), the former of the two having significantly more members and operates more closely to that of a blue collar union. Factions have developed within SAG that are angry over AFTRA's practice of signing contracts with productions for lower wages than are required by the SAG contracts, which they feel severely undercut their bargaining power."


Whew...