Those Who Forget The Lessons of History
It seems astonishing that it was only a little more than a year ago that we were writing a post called “The Inside Story of the Raid that Killed Phase One.” The similarity between what happened then and what’s going on now is striking.
April 4, 2008 – EXCLUSIVE: THE INSIDE STORY OF THE RAID THAT KILLED PHASE ONE
This SAGWATCH exclusive has been pieced together from multiple accounts of those who were actually in the rooms.It is a story of friendship, of ignorance, of betrayal, and, ultimately, disaster. And it started literally in the backyard.
Membership First’s Bonnie Bartlett hasn’t told us whether she sought out her neighbor, Susan Flannery of the Bold & Beautiful, but Flannery, the star of the long running show, had made no secret of her belief that she and her cast are due foreign residuals. The cast had taken the claim to AFTRA, which represents the actors on B&B, where it was researched, but the union had agreed with the employers that the show had not yet exceeded the contractual cap after which foreign residual payments would be distributed to the cast.
Flannery didn’t like that response, and complained to Bartlett about it, and, as well, about the fact that SAG LA actors get less expensive health insurance than AFTRA actors. Bartlett agreed that SAG insurance, particularly in LA, is better. In fact, Bartlett pointed out, the LA SAG insurance is far better than that provided to anyone else in SAG.
Bartlett, who also has done some soap work, sensed an opportunity. Atop her sympathy, she went even further. Wouldn’t it would be great, asked Bartlett, if all actors were in one union?
What Flannery didn’t know, as she quickly agreed that yes, it would be better if all actors were in one union, was that Bartlett was part of the group within SAG that had blocked merger of SAG and AFTRA, and, what she also didn’t know, was that she was about to get rolled. Bartlett suggested to Flannery that the B&B cast could simply “switch” the Bold & Beautiful’s AFTRA contract for an identical SAG contract. The word “decertify” was never used – it was all about “seamlessly switching” to SAG.
All the cast would have to do, Bartlett said, would be to sign a confidential petition, and the contract could simply be “switched” to SAG. The key, Bartlett said, would be to make this a completely secret move, and not let anyone at AFTRA know until it was a done deal.
Two copies of the petition were prepared. Flannery, who is the doyenne of B&B, quickly spread the word that the full cast should sign the petition, and the cast was told not to speak to anyone from AFTRA, not even the set representative.
No electronic copies were to be made. No one was to send e-mail about it. It had to be a complete secret. The secrecy held, even as Bartlett arranged for Flannery to meet with SAG NED Doug Allen, for a session that lasted some two hours.
Allen now says that in the two hour session he only told Flannery and others from B&B to talk to AFTRA, a claim AFTRA reps say shows precisely why they don’t trust him. ”Would telling them ‘Go see AFTRA’ take two hours?” one pointedly asked.
In any event, Flannery did not go to see AFTRA. The petition continued to circulate, as did the insistence on secrecy. But, fortunately for the cast, someone got concerned, and reached out for assistance.
Fortunately? Yes, because apparently Bartlett, Alan Rosenberg, Doug Allen and the rest of the crack SAG Legal team forgot to tell Flannery and the rest of the B&B cast that you can’t just “switch” unions. Shockingly, it seems they didn’t even know.
Not until after AFTRA’s now well known explosion over this and other raiding efforts by Membership First did the leaders of SAG discover that the NLRB has one set of rules about decertifications (minimum, one year between decertification and holding an election to bring in another union) and the AFL-CIO has another called Rule 20, under which the minimum time between decertifying one member union and bringing in another is two years, and the maximum can be five. We’re told that it took a senior AFL-CIO exec repeating himself in a heated conversation with Allen to hammer home that, and several other related points.
Of course, no one had explained to the B&B cast that in that one-to-five year period after a decertification, the cast would have no union contract, no union protections, no severance, no residuals and earn neither pension credits nor health insurance, unless CBS took pity on them. Ooops. No one had even bothered to point out that there were limits on when a decertification petition could be prepared, and that those limits had been violated. Double ooops.
Then someone pointed out one other not so small problem. Bonnie Bartlett was part of the last Membership First attempt to pack the AFTRA Board with its supporters. She was one of the two Membership First supporters elected to the AFTRA Board of Directors, and is currently a member of hte AFTRA Board. That meant Bartlett actually had a fiduciary duty to AFTRA, even as she was working to raid it. Uh oh. It was emergency damage control time at 5757.
Thus the official SAG statements about never wanting to represent soap operas, quickly contradicted by other Membership First directors, who are still pushing ahead, trying to justify and finish the B&B raid and others like it. And, of course, someone had to decide whether to try to calm down AFTRA, or, instead, to put AFTRA into a position where their walking away from joint negotiations was the only possible outcome.
The AFL-CIO was heavily involved again, its senior staff urging Allen and President Alan Rosenberg to sign a no-raiding pact. That was what AFTRA was demanding. Allen refused, but the two did agree to meet with AFTRA’s elected leadership, in what would be a final and critical session. Would there be conciliation? The answer came quickly.
One SAG insider quoted Allen as telling senior AFTRA leaders, “SAG represents dancers. Why can’t we have “Dancing with the Stars?” Kent McCord was quoted as asking, ”Where’s my SAG radio contract?”
Boom went the dynamite. Phase One, already teetering on the abyss, was blown apart.
The rest isn’t history yet, but is now the rather unpleasant days of our lives.
Yes, we know. There have been all sorts of very public denials by any number of the participants.
But here we are today, and the same “all actors in one union” rhetoric has led to hard line elements in Membership First contingent of the Hollywood Board forcing through a raiding resolution, apparently again hoping they could maintain plausible deniability, this time with official denials and doubletalk like, “use of the word “acquisition” in the resolution did not imply an endorsement of SAG adopting such a strategy.”
The possible fines to SAG aside, the lesson Membership First seems to have ignored, at all of our peril, is that for the past two years AFTRA has acted in a reasonably consistent manner. At first, the union sits and takes Membership’s First’s attacks without fighting back, in hope that the union’s members will recognize that MF is actually putting the membership last, and that the attacks are harmful to both SAG and AFTRA.
Invariably the passive strategy only emboldens Membership First, which consistently misinterprets the lack of action and gets more aggressive. Then, AFTRA, like a battered spouse who’s finally reached a breaking point, responds full bore. Membership First’s response is always the predictable “But honey, you know I really don’t want to hurt you…” augmented by a round of “but you know, in the 1950s it was really our jurisdiction.”
Until last year, the sweet talk response had always been accepted. But the result of the the last explosion was different. Phase 1 was “suspended.” Without the steadying influence of AFTRA in the negotiating sessions, Membership First was unchecked, and prevented SAG from reaching a TV-Theatrical contract for almost a year, costing all actors raises and, ultimately, leverage.
This time, with SAG and AFTRA on the verge of advising the AFL-CIO that the unions were in agreement that the $2 million each had put into escrow could be returned, because relations had improved, the hard core elements of Membership First went into Hamas mode again, firing their “acquisition” missiles.
AFTRA, which had all but ignored the violations to date, essentially called the cops, taking the complaint to the AFL-CIO. Membership First’s response? They’re insisting that the word “acquisition” doesn’t really mean acquisition. Maybe they’ve consulted Bill Clinton for a lesson in semantics, and are about to tell us “I did not have sex with that woman, Miss Lewinsky!” Because, as we all learned in middle school, oral sex isn’t sex, right?
Anyway, that’s where we are today, with AFTRA leaders apparently still considering what sanctions they’ll seek for this latest rendition of Membership First’s “all actors in one union” as a raiding theme song. What we hear is that they’ve consulted any number of people, and the consensus is that staying above the fray and pretending it never happened is no longer acceptable to anyone.
As we’ve said, it will be a hot Monday.
Thank you for posting this analysis. It can’t be said enough. Membership First is all about destruction. If they were in control of a country, we’d have Cambodia, or North Korea. We’d have reeducation camps, and anyone actually making a living would be torn down as not living like all the rest.
Granted, I’m pushing this out to almost the absurd, but their path of destruction is all to apparent. What have they brought this guild but misery and exhaustion?
It is my hope that there is a silent majority out there of SAG and AFTRA members like me who realize that the seemingly schizophrenic behavior of Anne Marie Johnson is now starting to sound like a bad parody of the movie “Chinatown” (“I love SAG, I’m suing SAG, I hate AFTRA, I’m running for AFTRA office!”)
Sheesh.
We managed to get synchronicity with the other unions. We get raises, we end the horrible work slowdown, we eventually merge with SAG and have one actors union. I’m voting yes and hoping to keep the drama onscreen and out of the boardrooms of my unions.
The term “acquisition” in Angel Tompkins’s motion is fully fleshed out in this statement that appeared on the Membership First web site until February of this year:
Anne-Marie Johnson can engage in Clintonian doublespeak all she wants, but “acquisition” means “acquisition.” The plan outlined above has never been disavowed by Membership First, and it lives on everywhere except their web site. It talks of taking the 44,000 dual cardholders (out of a total of 70,000) out of AFTRA, potentially leaving AFTRA half its size. It talks about financially compensating AFTRA (although in almost laughably inadequate terms) for this sudden body blow.
It’s raiding, pure and simple.
VG
Vocieguy,
Not only is it raiding. Or should I say an attempt at raiding, the plan has one humongous flaw in it. There is no referendum these clowns can draw up that would have any legal authority over AFTRA. It fails on several fronts, but here are two basic ones…
1) If AFTRA does not authorize and certify the ballots, then no matter what the results say it does not speak for members of AFTRA. It would simply be a public poll with no legal weight anywhere. So, there referendum is DOA.
2) Even if AFTRA were to send out such a ballot, it would not go out to SAG membership at large as proposed, nor would it go out to just dual-card holders within SAG. It would have to go out to AFTRA general membership at large. The result of what all SAG members and some AFTRA members want carries no weight with AFTRA as they have no fiduciary responsibility to SAG members, but they do have one to all members of AFTRA.
3.) “If current AFTRA leaders refuse any offers or negotiations, AFTRA will be refusing the will of their own membership. To successfully defy the membership, AFTRA leaders will have to abandon all rules of union democracy.” Actually this is completely false. As mentioned previously, their proposed referendum would not speak for the will of AFTRA membership (maybe these nuts need to consult a lawyer when dreaming their cooky plans).
P.S. After further thought, my guess is that they probably know there is no legal basis for them to even pursue this course of action. However, from the political angle they have to keep floating ideas (no matter how unrealistic) of all actors in one union because they realize the overwhelming majority of actors think it is silly to have two competing unions representing them. So, if they are oppose to merger they have to propose something or they would lose the majority of their supporters. They can’t just say we oppose merger and we want to stay separate so that we can maintain control of SAG. So, the only alternative is to say we oppose merger and this is our plan to get all actors into SAG (shhh. nevermind the law says we cant actually do it – but doesn’t it sound good? cheeer loud!)
This:
“We will offer to negotiate financial aid that AFTRA may require during any transition period. (Much of this can be covered by sharing services between the two unions.”
Reads to me, that SAG would offer finacial renumeration to AFTRA. In other word they would buy the jurisdiction over actors that actors vote to grant SAG. The fact that a votes of actors would take place before any transition, would mean it would be the will of the AFTRA/SAG memberships, that all jurisdiction over actors, transition to SAG. That’s not raiding, that’s the will of the memberships.
To be fair there would have to be separate votes, among the AFTRA membership and the SAG membership, just like the various merger votes that have occurred over the years.
This statement is probably true:
“We have no doubt that tens of thousands of dual card-holders (those who are members of both S.A.G. and AFTRA) – an overwhelming majority – will vote for S.A.G.”
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Admin. Comment – That statement has to come from someone smoking crack. It certainly doesn’t come from anyone with a clue about how the labor laws work.
Buy jurisdiction? From whom? AFTRA can’t sell it. And wouldn’t if it could.
It’s just another Membership First straw man…
God, this a silly discussion. You can’t buy something that ain’t for sale. And if it were, the Guild couldn’t afford it. These people fail to understand or recognize that the diectors of AFTRA have a legal fiduciary duty to all their members. It’s yet another half-baked hare-brained scheme from an increasingly desperate minority of dimwits.
Aftra members can vote aftra out as their bargaining agent .
“We will offer to negotiate financial aid that AFTRA may require during any transition period. (Much of this can be covered by sharing services between the two unions.â€
Just out of curiousty, if SAG were to successfully “negotaiate” all actors out of AFTRA what shared services would there be between the two unions?
This sounds to me like we will call it purchasing, but we ain’t gonna give em chit.
Mike – yes, on an individual show…not out on ALL shws. Only the cast of a given show can – but then – here’s the rub – if they did, they’d be without a contract for over a year. SAG cannot step in the next day….so, by voting out AFTRA they would be without the protect of any contract for a long time. Not something I – or any sane member would do.
Mike – you and MF have a lot to learn about SAG, AFTRA and labor law. You should not be making inflamming comments when your facts are all wrong.
How wonderful that Angel is now the mouthpiece for Membership First. I see a parallel in Cheney assuming that position for the Republican Party – Angel calls raiding “acquisition”, and Cheney calls torture “enhanced interrogation”.
I say we let them both keep spouting. What is it now? 20-some percent of all Americans consider themselves Republicans?
My question is why did they bring this up at a Hollywood Board meeting?
If they wanted a task force to look into the subject on how to do it-they could have just done it themselves without bring SAG into the picture.
Once they learned how to do it, and if found reasonable, then they could bring it to the National Board to vote on.
No one would know. No disparagement. No fine against SAG.
Mike says
“Aftra members can vote aftra out as their bargaining agent ”
What is this supposed to mean? Do you imagine an actor taking a part in an Aftra show and saying “i’d rather have a sag contract?” or do you see a scenario where the cast of a show says, one day, “We’d rather be SAG?” Do you know that it is federal law that no workers cannot “change”unions until a minimum of 1 yr, mostly 2 years passes where the worked in ‘non union’ before a new union can be voted in? I really mean it Mike, what does your statement mean? Please tell me.
I think the “acquisition” motion is a bad idea. As I’ve mentioned before, there is a process to determine jurisdiction and an body that mediates jurisdictional disputes, the 4A’s. The the two unions should handle all disputes through the 4A’s and if that doesn’t work, the NLRB. Devising new schemes to gain jurisdiction will lead to disaster. Frustration can cause people to try to find a quick fix. I would prefer SAG and AFTRA go by the book.
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Ed. Comment – I’ll agree with you that the raiding motion was a bad idea – I’ll go further. It was one of the dumbest things to come out of a group known for really dumb things.
But you still haven’t a clue when it comes to the body that handles jurisdictional disputes.
The 4As? SAG lost the last time they went there complaining about AFTRA – when the Allens got voted down. That’s why Membership First wants nothing to do with the 4As… they only quote 50-60 year old documents, not the last one.
And what was amazing about having lost that 4As vote, is most of the other unions were kind of neutral and leaning towards SAG until the Allens became bellicose and belligerent. It was great, two guys, one an ex football player, verbally beating up on two women. They turned the crowd right around.
To Ed.
The 4A’s still handles jurisdictional disputes, between the 4A’s affiliated unions, including SAG and AFTRA, even though AFTRA has its own charter with the AFL-CIO, according to Kim Hedgpeth as stated in a recent interview with Jonathan Handel. So I don’t know where your “haven’t got a clue” slam is coming from. Yes I know that Doug Allen and SAG did not prevail, the last time that they came before the 4A’s. I read about it on this website last year. So What?
Kathy, my statement means exactly what you stated. I am aware of the waiting periods. I am also aware that the period can be shorter that two years if the contract has expired, when workers vote to decertify.
I know that the cast of Kyle X Y was considering a decertification vote recently. So its not unprecedented. The cast of the “Bold and the Beautiful” also wanted out from under AFTRA jurisdiction but they reportedly didn’t know that you couldn’t just switch unions.
Mike, you should stop posting. You’re unbelievably misinformed.
You have to learn to vet stuff yourself and not just parrot the MF talking points. They’re usually wrong.
The great Spanish philosopher George Santayana said it best:
“Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it”.
Let’s show those First Cult mooks how much we’ve learned.
Please.
Neil,
Please, explain where I’m unbelievably misinformed regarding SAG AFTRA and the 4A’s. Or any other area.
Do you just want an echo chamber of people on this website sharing your opinion.
Mike,
The cast of an individual show cannot decertify the union that represents them under the current TV/Theatrical or Exhibit A agreements. Under the NLRA, the right to call for a decertification election belongs to the collective bargaining unit, which, in both cases, under Exhibit A and the TV/Theatrical contract, is the entire union, not the separate cast. The fact that there may have been some unhappy actors on a specific show does not mean they had any chance at pursuing decertification, so you can’t really put much stock in such talk, and you shouldn’t cite them as evidence that decertification was a possibility. The fact that those unhappy actors talked about decertification just means they know as little about the subject as you do.
Furthermore, decertification elections can only take place within certain specified times; 60-90 days before a collective bargaining agreement terminates or where a CBA has expired and a new one has not been ratified. (In other words, SAG could face a legitimate decertification action right now on TV/Theatricals, and AFTRA could not on Exhibit A. SAG could also face decertification on all those other contracts that MF let expire, too.)
And just so we’re straight on it, the only restriction in the NLRA on holding representation elections is that you cannot hold more than one within 12 months. This means is you have a successful decertification election, you cannot certify a new representative for one year.
I don’t care how “aware” you are that the “period can be shorter” in certain circumstances. Ms. Joosten was simply pointing out the reality (you ought to meet reality sometime, maybe you can be friends) that decert actions often take years to play out, during which time representation of the employees is in limbo, and, given the provision that an employer may disregard the union if he has credible evidence that the union lacks the support of a majority of the employees, it can be worse than limbo.
In other words, you were claiming you are “aware” of something that really doesn’t exist. The law says there can be no new election for twelve months. There’s nothing that says it can be “shorter than two years” if the contract expires. That’s just hooey.
You really ought to try to inform yourself about things before you try to spread disinformation in front of people who know better. I realize that it takes more time to correct you than it does for you to make things up, and that forcing you to read these corrections taxes your limited attention span, but these long posts of mine wouldn’t be necessary if you got things right the first time. Give us both a break, OK?
So far the only thing Mike has gotten correct is the spelling of his own name.
Kyle XY is cancelled. So that decertification point is moot.
Mike,
I’m not going to be redundant. Just go and re-read nearly EVERY post following any of your ludicrous claims.
People far smarter than I have already taken care of your request to me.
Repeatedly.
Neil,
You wouldn’t know if Fred W was right or wrong. He is wrong though. His entire first paragraph is wrong. He believes that 30% of the entire AFTRA membership is needed to decertify AFTRA as the collective bargaining agent for an individual TV show. That’s absurd. AFTRA negotiates their basic cable contracts on a show by show basis with employers. Each so has its own contract. I’m not a labor lawyer so of course I don’t know the intricacies of labor law and decertification elections.
But I do know that Unions that have already negotiated a contract for employees can be subjected to a decertification election, near the expiration of the contract. That what I was saying and that’s a fact. In the instance of “Kyle” the cast contemplated decertifing AFTRA and if 30% of the cast of that show, signed a petition to decertify, a decertification election could’ve taken place, as the contract for that show had expired or was about to expire.
In 2005
WCHS-TV in West Virginia voted to decertify AFTRA, did 30% of the membership have to sign a petition?
Ditto, the NBC correspondent that also voted to decertify AFTRA that same year.
or KIRO-AM or KIRO-AM or any of the other workers at TV and Radio station that have voted to decertify AFTRA over the years.
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Ed. Comment – Decertification campaigns are usually waged by companies against unions, though, as we’ve seen, sometimes individuals within a union try to wage them for all sorts of misguided reasons.
In broadcast shops the companies (particularly GE/NBC) hire a couple of younger people and make them promises including promotions if they convince their co-workers to vote the union out. On occasion it works. One of the leaders of the NBC decertification called AFTRA a few months later to complain that he was being forced to work 14 hour days on a regular basis with no overtime or comp time, and admitted the decert was one of his biggest mistakes ever.
“You wouldn’t know if Fred W was right or wrong. He is wrong though. His entire first paragraph is wrong. He believes that 30% of the entire AFTRA membership is needed to decertify AFTRA as the collective bargaining agent for an individual TV show. That’s absurd. AFTRA negotiates their basic cable contracts on a show by show basis with employers.”
Hey Mike,
Exactly what part of this quote from my earlier post is “wrong?”
“The cast of an individual show cannot decertify the union that represents them under the current TV/Theatrical or Exhibit A agreements. Under the NLRA, the right to call for a decertification election belongs to the collective bargaining unit, which, in both cases, under Exhibit A and the TV/Theatrical contract, is the entire union, not the separate cast.”
Please note the use of the phrase “under Exhibit A and the TV/Theatrical contract.”
Repeat the following as necessary, until it sinks in:
Exhibit A and TV/Theatrical don’t cover basic cable.
I realize you’re trying to change the subject here, but it isn’t going to work. Unfortunately, your attempt at misdirection only exposes more of your ignorance. As far as an individual basic cable show cast decertifying, I gave you too much credit for reading what I wrote and understanding it rather than just reacting to it.
You point out the idiocy of your own argument when you say:
“In the instance of “Kyle†the cast contemplated decertifing AFTRA and if 30% of the cast of that show, signed a petition to decertify, a decertification election could’ve taken place, as the contract for that show had expired or was about to expire.”
Given that you acknowledge the AFTRA basic cable contract is a “show by show” deal, when do you think show contracts expires?
I know you don’t like to waste time actually thinking about things, so I’ll give you a hint. The answer is the early of two events: the cancellation of the show or after three years. Kyle X Y ran three years. Exactly when were they going to hold a representation election, Mike?
I realize you had to try to shift focus away from TV/Theatricals and Exhibit A to talk about Kyle X Y because you figured out your other example, the Bold and The Beautiful, is covered under the general AFTRA daytime contract and would require 30% of the entire union membership to decertify. Your silence in defending that example was damning.
(And lets just skip over that “shorter period” business about elections. That was just embarrassing for you, and there’s really no need to revisit your ignorance there.)
And then you finish with this gem:
“WCHS-TV in West Virginia voted to decertify AFTRA, did 30% of the membership have to sign a petition?”
I realize that my earlier post was far too long for you and by the time you finished it you had already forgotten what I wrote at the start, so I’ll end with it here.
“Under the NLRA, the right to call for a decertification election belongs to the collective bargaining unit.”
Was the entire union the collective bargaining unit at that station, Mike? Or was it just the people who worked there? You tell me.
Your attempts at obfuscation aside, the fundamental points remains the same:
Decertification was not a legitimate option for Kyle XY or Bold and Beautiful. Raising them as examples of what might happen only demonstrates that you don’t know the first thing about the subject. A show done under Exhibit A will require 30% of the entire union membership to sign a petition to hold the election. A show done under one of AFTRA’s basic cable contracts could only be held in the narrow time window just before the contract term ends, or afterward, if there is no new contract signed.
If you are going to claim that decertification is a legitimate option, you need legitimate examples.
Explain to me what is so hard about this stuff that you just don’t get it. I’ll be glad to help.
A Note To Ed – The salting of a unit with anti-union agents is as old as the NLRA, and undoubtedly older. There are probably cave paintings at Lasceaux that explain the same tactic. Back in my day, one of the key issues raised in station decert campaigns (and there were a couple, although not nearly as many of them as there seem to be now) was pension and health coverage. I spent a lot of time writing informational pieces comparing AFTRA and specific company plans. The advantage always came down to AFTRA on portability; few folks in the unit saw themselves spending their entire careers in Saginaw or Portland or Jacksonville, and when they moved on, they wanted their benefits to go with them. AFTRA was usually the better choice if that was important to them. An odd byproduct of consolidation of ownership at broadcast outlets has been to reduce the impact of portability. Nowadays, if you move, your about as likely to go to another station in the same chain as not, so portability is less of a problem. That’s got to hurt the union in the representation election.