Answering the Mail
Dear Editor,
Can you please give us your thoughts and opinions on what you think are the motivations of the MFer’s and the Allens for this anti-AFTRA campaign? Â What do they stand to gain, in your opinion?
Also, for the suggestion box:  please post your email address (editor@sagwatch.net) prominently on your front home page, so that folks can easily write you.  I finally located  it again, but it’s a bit buried within the site and hard to find.
Thanks,
Michael
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Michael -
Thanks for your question. First, the easy part: we’ve tried to make the contact more prominent, as you request - it’s on our About Us page, which is now called About Us/Contact. We’re trying to figure out how to put it on the front page. But none of us are really web experts. We’re just working with the software our ISP gives us – and it has some limitations.
Now for the hard part. Membership First’s motivations.
There are a couple of different schools of thought. We’re not sure any one of them is exactly right. The truth is probably a blend.
1. They’re deep into political power.
2. They truly believe that their strategies are intellectually and morally superior to everyone else’s ideas. The corollary to that is that they think everyone else’s ideas are stupid.
3. They don’t think anyone outside of Hollywood is serious about their craft.
4. They think that if they improve their own wages and working conditions, it will have a trickle down effect on the rest of the union, and that the trickle down is a good thing.
5. Doug Allen, who we count as being among the Membership First group, is certainly motivated to keep his job. He was hired by Membership First and given marching orders that send him on the current path. He probably thinks if Membership First loses the upcoming election, he’ll be fired, as were his predecessors. (He’s probably right about that, too!)
There probably are other motivations that vary with the individual. Some undoubtedly think that whatever happens, SAG must survive as SAG (remember the SAVE SAG movement from 2003?)
Somebody from the group may want to chime in with more.
“The motivations of the MFer’s and the Allens for this anti-AFTRA campaign?”
Well over a year ago MembershipFirst and Doug Allen seemed to choose the route of attempting to marginalize, alienate, and eventually eliminate AFTRA as a factor in negotiating actors’ contracts as SAG’s prime strategy in approaching the negotiations of 2008. They viewed SAG as being stronger & smarter than AFTRA, so they proceeded to throw their full weight against our sister union. But they were wrong. The folks in charge of AFTRA did not roll over and do SAG’s bidding. They firmly held their ground – for many months – against an inexorable onslaught, until they saw that they could no longer partner with SAG and had to negotiate their own contract.
Didn’t SAG see how faulty and dangerous such an approach could be? Many of us in SAG government DID see this, and we spoke out and offered alternative approaches. And we were ignored and/or rebuffed over and over again by the Hollywood (MF) “leadership” who hold a slim majority on the National Board and who control the communications and other resources of the guild with an iron fist.
Thus MF/Hollywood deliberately maneuvered the guild into what may be an untenable position.
“What do they stand to gain, in your opinion?”
The full panoply of their gains are presently on display.
That’s why Alan Rosenberg loses his temper and screams at those who disagree with him.
That’s why our head negotiator has nothing better to do than scream: “Shame on AFTRA!”