SAGWatch

Great for a country. For unions? Vastly overrated.

In a bitter and petulant letter dated July first, Membership First stalwart Justine Bateman, best known for her use of the word “scumbag” in reference to AFTRA, has  resigned from the SAG National Board and says she will not run for a second term. In her letter, Bateman again uses the word “scumbag” in reference to AFTRA, and compares SAG to Communist China and criticizes the members for ratifying the TV-Theatrical contract, which she opposed.

To All,

I am resigning my position as SAG National Board member and withdrawing my bid for re-election effective immediately.

I initially ran for the Board 3 years ago to affect a change in three areas: the almost non-functioning web-site, the poor agent-relations, and the seeming absence of jurisdictional lines between SAG and AFTRA.

I am happy to have been able to effect the change in the web-site with the help of that committee, Doug Allan, and Pamela Greenwald, but the other goals have alluded me and have just become worse.

Agents are now not only owned in part by organizations that would create conflict of interest, but acting as the production company themselves and nobody saw fit to stop that. Now, though, we’re very far on the other side of that and I suppose actors have not really given thought to to the concept of being represented by an advocate with no conflicting alliances.

AFTRA has just basically, after years of trying to get SAG’s attention by lighting the newspapers on the porch on fire, have finally succeeded in partially burning the place down. And all we dual-card members be damned.

We should have bought that scumbag organization years ago and shut that duplicitous leadership up instead of submitting to this “non-disparagement agreement” by which I am, happily, no longer bound.

And our own SAG leadership gagging Alan Rosenberg and Connie Stevens? What is this? Communist China or tumultuous Iran? I can’t a part of a union leadership that strips it’s elected leadership of its voice. If we can’t speak up about injustices in union matters, how are we being effective at all in office? No, better to not be a part of it and to be able to speak freely against what I see as irresponsibility, fear, greed, and ego-driven decision-making.

And then there is the membership itself. They rarely expressed the correct anger at AFTRA low-balling contracts over the years that affected their ability to provide for themselves. They then ignored, seemingly, ALL the news about the migration from Old Media to New Media and recently took from the AMPTP the worst deal I have ever seen. For nothing.

This is not the make up of membership that could have gotten us Health and Pension or Residuals like our older members struck and fought for years ago. We have all enjoyed those benefits, but when it was our turn to protect them, we blew it. AFTRA blew it. And then we blew it by not expressing absolute outrage over their tactic of GREATLY encouraging their newscasters and weathermen to vote up that AFTRA TV/Theatrical contract “even if you do not work this contract and never will”. Yeah, that was in an e-mail that went around. Some of these weathermen even made YouTube videos celebrating their vote, thumbing their noses at us. CLASSY.

SAG’s members themselves have now voted up a contract that will cause about 50% of the WORKING members to leave the business, but now that you’re all “back to work” you’re probably too busy to read this. Congratulations.

Thank you for allowing me to serve and to represent the membership. I hope I honored the sacrifices of past Board Members who created such wonderful benefits for me and my family like Pension & Health, Basic Minimums, and Residuals. To those members I am truly, truly grateful. Words cannot express my appreciation of your sacrifices for future generations of actors.

Thank You,
Justine Bateman

Curiously, and perhaps in an oversight, Bateman appears not to have resigned from the Hollywood Board, which means that her line about being no longer subject to the Non Disparagement Agreement is wrong.

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Update: Here’s Variety on the story, which points out – as we should have – that the departure of Batemen will not change the balance of power at SAG, because her replacement will be appointed by the Hollywood Board, which is still dominated by Membership First. However, the effect in the election could be more important, since Bateman’s name recognition may be hard to replace.

Variety also says: “SAG First VP Anne-Marie Johnson told Daily Variety that Bateman was speaking for herself and not on behalf of Membership First.”

There’s a catch phrase that came into fashion in early 2008, at the time AFTRA’s leadership decided it could not negotiate TV-Theatrical jointly with the Membership First/Doug Allen led SAG, that “AFTRA couldn’t trust SAG.” That catch phrase is now bandied about in discussions of relations between the unions, and we think it’s leading people in the wrong direction, because it implies that AFTRA and SAG have different interests, and that the interests are institutional, rather than those of the members.

We think that’s way off base, on any number of levels. Back then, the AFTRA leadership didn’t decide they couldn’t “trust SAG.” They decided (correctly) that Membership First, which at the time was SAG’s ruling party, was engaged in raiding, and had no intention of negotiating a contract, but instead were spoiling for another strike. They heard the Allens’ calls for changes to the Phase 1 system that would have given Membership First the power to block any deal.

It wasn’t that AFTRA couldn’t trust SAG, it was that AFTRA’s leadership didn’t trust SAG’s leadership.

Since then, of course, Doug Allen was fired. SAG’s leadership has changed. Phase 1 collapsed but was seemingly resurrected for the Commercials Contract. But one still hears talk of “AFTRA not trusting SAG.” Without some important extra words, the phrase makes no sense.

SAG and AFTRA’s regularly working members, those who make a living acting, overwhelmingly are members of both unions, and often Equity as well. Therefore, unless you imagine that the unions are something other than the members, one union not trusting the other means either that the members don’t trust themselves or that the single cardholders in SAG (who make up the majority) have interests different from those of the members who work.

Qualified voting supporters will be inclined to say “Who cares what the people who don’t work want?” though they might put it more politely. (”The unions should emphasize the needs of those who actually work the contracts.”)

We put it this way: aside from staff, who may have a bias towards preserving their own jobs, there are no institutional interests that trump the members’ interests. So we’re confused about who’s supposedly not trusting whom.

What we think the phase means, as it is used now, is that AFTRA’s leadership (and membership!) don’t seem ready to trust last year’s Hollywood election results – with big pickups for Unite for Strength – as indicating long term change. They want to see at least another year or two of solid election wins by the moderates over the hardliners, who are already pushing for a strike in 2011.

It seems to be more of a question of trusting the ability of Unite for Strength to mobilize the Hollywood electorate, something it seems to have done well in the TV-Theatrical ratification vote, which passed overwhelmingly despite the opposition of Membership First. That question of trust is what we think will limit any possibility of merger of SAG and AFTRA in the near term, despite the substantial support merger seems to have among the members.

But it’s important to remember it isn’t about AFTRA trusting SAG or SAG trusting AFTRA. It’s about whether the members can establish stability at SAG. We think it will happen, but we’re not sure it has happened just yet.

Sent via e-mail today:

Message from Screen Actors Guild President Alan Rosenberg

Dear Members,

As we head into the long holiday weekend, I wanted to write to you today to acknowledge the tremendous loss and sadness our community has experienced in recent weeks with the passing of so many cultural icons in such a short amount of time.

The list of those we’ve lost is long, from Beatrice Arthur, Dom DeLuise, Natasha Richardson and Ron Silver, to the very recent deaths of David Carradine, Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, Karl Malden, Fred Travalena, Gale Storm, Harve Presnell and others, these are people and personalities who created indelible characters and left a legacy that enriched all of our lives.

Screen Actors Guild is fortunate to have benefitted from the service and leadership of some of these members. David Carradine and Karl Malden, along with Frank Aletter and Jim Hutchison, who was a sitting Board member at the time of his death, gave of themselves to serve this union and are an example to not only myself but to all other members about the importance and significance of member service and leadership. We are a better union because of them.

Our deepest sympathies go out to their families. And to you and your family, please have a safe and happy 4th of July weekend. God bless our country and remember our troops.

In unity,

Alan Rosenberg

It’s been a rough couple of weeks for those of us with long memories of the business. Harve Presnell is the latest to pass on, losing a battle with pancreatic cancer at age 75.