Trusting SAG, and AFTRA
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.
The same moderates-vs.-hardliners scenario will be playing out at the WGA-West in their upcoming elections.
VG
Hardliners are pushing for a SAV going into negotiations with possibility of a strike in 11. As we should go into every negotiation. With a SAV
A union should go into a negotiation with full awareness that a strike authorization may be needed, and that it may need to be followed by calling a strike. But a strike authorization vote is a step that should be taken at the proper point in negotiations. It has value as an independent bargaining tactic and shouldn’t be used prematurely: it should be kept in reserve until its use can provide key leverage to move negotiations past a sticking point.
I’m sorry but I’m going to have to disagree. Look what happened when our union needed a SAV. Membership was too wary and jaded. It never would have passed at the point we needed it. We may have been able to pass it however if it had been voted on going into negotiations. Or perhaps when the contract expired.
Coming on the heels of the recently-ended writers’ strike, there’s no chance a strike authorization vote for SAG would have passed at the beginning of negotiations in April, 2008. I think the odds would have been even less likely as of the contract expiration, particularly as SAG was at that moment engaged in the ill-starred effort to defeat ratification of AFTRA’s contract.
The truth is that the people leading SAG’s negotiations never had the kind of support needed to obtain strike authorization, much less make credible use of it. Too many constituencies within SAG had been alienated and ridiculed by the MF group, and the level of trust commanded by the negotiating committee was dropping, not increasing, as time went by.
A strike authorization vote that failed was too big a risk to take, and everyone knew it. But in reality a strike authorization vote that passes is not an end in itself, and does not represent the “only” leverage that SAG has. Rather, it is broad agreement among the rank and file members as to what is essential that brings leverage. We lacked that in 2008, as the people leading the negotiations adopted a superior, “we know better than you” attitude that attempted to dictate to SAG members what they should want, rather than building consensus. As SAG members watched millions of dollars slipping away from them, any hope of consensus only dwindled.
VG
VG, do you think we would have had a better chance of obtaining a SAV later on in negotiations?
Any time that negotiations stalls past a contract deadline, work is going to slow, causing people to worry about their next paycheck. Thus making a SAV harder to obtain.
I do agree with the fact that membership does need to trust its leaders with a SAV and trust that leadership will not abuse it’s power. But, I believe if this is the case than leadership SHOULD go into negotiations with a SAV vote. No, it is NOT the “only” leverage we have, but it is a great deal of it. Otherwise, why are we even in a union at all?
Going in with a SAV is different then going in planning to strike. AMJ has publicly told everyone to be prepared for a strike, MF feels we need to strike to show our power. Our power is in our wisdom of when we should or should not strike…and our power is in our members realizing who is best suited to lead our union.
And planning is also different than preparing for one. I don’t believe MF is planning as so much preparing for one if the next negotiations go down the same path these last ones did. And to be honest, without a SAV sag has very little leverage in negotiations.
An SAV doesn’t give you leverage. The solidarity of a unified membership gives you leverage. An SAV is only evidence of solidarity, not a substitute for it. If you have true solidarity, everyone knows it, SAV or not.
Ned Vaughn thinks a SAV in your pocket is a good thing to have. I have to agree with Ned. If I was them, I’d have a board vote after the next elections scheduling a SAV to be sent to the membership on Jun 10th (or whatever other date that equals results by July 1 contract expiration) unless the NED and chief negotiator suspends such a vote by informing the board of significant progress having been made in talks with AMPTP by that date.
That way you’ve got double leverage.
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Admin. Comment – An SAV is never a negative, except under the circumstance in which the National Board is controlled by people who aren’t stable or rational. In that sole instance, it’s a danger to all.
Yes, a SAV is evidence of solidarity, so its much one in the same. If membership does not stand behind it’s leaders decisions, than obviously there is a problem. And if membership cannot agree on whether to give its leadership the power to call a strike, than obviously there is no solidarity.
And if we say we have solidarity but cannot stand behind our leaders, than clearly we’re just hypocrites. It’s very much one in the same.
Here’s the problem. You wrote in another comment:
“Any time that negotiations stalls past a contract deadline, work is going to slow, causing people to worry about their next paycheck. Thus making a SAV harder to obtain.”
If the momentum of the membership’s morale during negotiations is really toward doubt, disunity and selfishness, then even if the leadership has a SAV in hand, it won’t be worth much: the membership won’t support the strike (a strike being the ultimate “work slowdown”). The result will be the collapse of the strike and a contract that offers the same or less than what was on offer at the beginning of the strike.
The job of the leadership is to build solidarity and unity all along the way during negotiations. If the union can demonstrate to management that its members are solidifying behind the union’s demands, rather than fragmenting away from them, then management will take those demands more seriously because they will understand that the membership will authorize a strike if necessary and will remain in solidarity on the picket lines if their leadership calls a strike.
If the argument for an early strike authorization vote is that it’s necessary to give the members “Dutch courage” or to “burn the bridge behind them” so they can’t chicken out of a strike they don’t want or support, it’s really a poor argument.
Y’know, I don’t want to get into a big hassle here about the merits to changes to Phase I. Apparently it is a “third rail” type of issue for some folks.
But it is just wrong to state, as this piece does, that changes to Phase I would have “enabled” MF to block a deal. And the proof is in the pudding –AFTRA withdrew from Phase I because the *existing* Phase I allowed MF to block a deal with equal representation.
If you don’t like changes to Phase I, then fine –let’s have that conversation elsewhere. But let’s not misrepresent the facts.
Geo, you must not be familiar with the history of Phase I in 2007 and 2008.
Historically, the Hollywood representatives on the joint negotiating committee have always been outvoted by a combination of (a) the AFTRA members of that committee, and (b) the NY and RBD members. In other words, Hollywood SAG members were in a distinct minority, and they have bitched about this each time for at least the past decade.
What MF tried to do in 2007 and 2008 was to end AFTRA’s influence on the joint negotiating committee, through the ill-conceived SAG referendum to end Phase I, which was supposed to lead to a new “proportional” makeup of the committee, and to end the NY and RBD influence on the committee through the unconstitutional “bloc voting” measure enacted in mid-2007. By reducing AFTRA’s numbers on the committee to less than half, and by making the entire SAG vote depend only on how Hollywood voted, MF would have complete control of the committee. That’s how MF would have had the ability to block a deal.
VG
Right you are, VG. And the “bloc voting” fiasco came about after New York had fashioned a motion that would have brought all contracts in shared SAG/AFTRA jurisdiction (including Basic Cable)into Phase I – to be jointly negotiated. It was an elegant plan that would have, in one fell swoop, solved jurisdictional differences and equalized (eventually and soon) all contracts in all areas of shared jurisdiction. But it was too much for the MF folks who stormed, “That’s merger! That’s merger!” As though it were cholera, and swallowed Doug Allen’s “bloc voting” scheme and tried to shove it down everyone else’s throats until their lawyers advised them that it would be illegal.
Hey, I like it. Hope to see that motion reconsidered by the SAG board sooner rather than later.
VG–
Thanks for the history, it did improve my knowledge. So MF wasn’t just after a majority for SAG, it was after Hollywood division control of SAG’s entire vote. Good to know. Democratic and anti-democratic at the same time. Neat trick, that.
Still, AFTRA withdrew from the existing Phase I, not the proposed Phase I. That’s a fact too, right?
Yes, it was AFTRA that finally said “enough is enough” after dealing with a year of shenanigans from SAG. The ink was barely dry on the referendum that SAG was about to send out to end Phase I, as to which Alan Rosenberg had already sent out a couple of lengthy e-mails to SAG members endorsing the measure and claiming that it would somehow force AFTRA to come begging to SAG to reconstitute the Phase I agreement along terms that SAG would dictate. SAG was dragging its feet on starting negotiations, which AFTRA wanted to start right away. Then the raiding issues came to the fore, and the AFTRA executive board decided they had had enough.
I view it as comparable to the battered spouse who finally moves out of the house. Saying, “Well, you’re the one that left” really doesn’t aid analysis of what led to the action.
VG
Oh, while Justine didn’t mention it specifically,
Who wanted a strike? MF. Who wouldn’t send out a SAV when they had the power to do so? MF.
Thanks for the nuances, VG. I do appreciate it. I don’t really want to get into at length here whether AFTRA was justified for withdrawing from Phase I or not. Not because I’m uninterested, I’m just afraid (too late!) of taking the thread sideways. The limited point I was trying to make, and still believe, was that the original Phase I still allowed MF to block a deal. Nothing I’ve heard from you changes my opinion on that point. You can’t justifably lay that at the feet of proposals to change Phase I.
The original Phase I did not allow MF to block a deal — that was MF’s whole beef. On the 26-member joint committee, MF had about 7 votes. It couldn’t block anything that AFTRA + NY + RBD wanted, because those groups collectively controlled 19 of the 26 votes.
VG
But VG. . .the Phase I agreement I’ve read as an appendix to SAG’s constiution doesn’t specify how SAG would make up its contingent.
So you’re in favor of changes to Phase I too? Just different ones than the ones MF wants?
“The Joint Negotiating Committee will be composed of an equal number of representatives from AFTRA and SAG, such representatives to be selected by, and responsible to, their respective Board of Directors and to the Joint Board referred to below.”
I don’t see anything there giving AFTRA veto or approval over internal SAG procedures. Perhaps that was a mistake, but it is what it is.
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Ed. Comment: You may be confused about Phase 1, which is currently not in use. AFTRA never had a veto over SAG’s procedures, nor did SAG have a veto over AFTRA’s.
Not confused, Ed. Just trying to jolly VG into admitting that the actual Phase I agreement as codified is not the perfection that supporters of the AFTRA view of matters would like to represent.
Perhaps a real compromise is real democracy. No block voting, but real regional representation. That gives both sides something they want, while reducing the power of the demagogues to demagogue.
But at any rate, it wasn’t proposed changes to the actual Phase I agreement that killed Phase I. It was a serious disconnect between the majority of the national board of AFTRA and the majority of the national board of SAG. That’s the real owie in the community.
Ed., I’m glad you brought up the “trust” issue in the way that you did. My discomfort has always been the OBJECTIFICATION of the other — in this case, AFTRA — as though the AFTRA membership was composed of unidentified monsters and charlatans that weren’t human. Nothing could be further from the truth. The “AFTRA doesn’t trust SAG” statement seems to be expounded by people who have never met an AFTRA member(not true, I’m sure, I hope, but still…).
We only have to look at ourselves. We are SAG, we are AFTRA, we are Equity. The membership makes up the leadership, not some disembodied entity without a soul. The staffs do not control the unions, we do. I keep hoping that everyone, and I mean everyone, will realize that, and think, “Whoa, WTF, why are there two — three — different unions representing performers? If we really want power, we need to make it one powerful body.” Anyone that doesn’t get this, and believes there is power in one little-big union running around trying to compete with other unions for the same KIND of work, has a fundamental lack of understanding of economic power. A market can only be cornered if all the means and the purveyors of that skill are grouped into one body, so that if that skill were withheld, there would be no one that could offer it. Then what? Who is going to provide the body, the voices, the movements, the gesture, the look, the presence, the charisma, the craft, the appeal, the essence of what we the audiences look for in our storytellers – fictional or non-fictional, actors, dancers, stunt performers, comics, hosts or news providers, or someone telling us the probable story of what the weather is going to be like that day?
I hate to sound like a complete cliche, but we are all it.
SAG’s practice is to populate all national committees with proportional representation from Hollywood, New York, and the Regional Branch Division. Each Division has the power to select its allocated members on the national committee (see Article VI section 7). Thus, with a 13-member SAG contingent to the 26-member Phase I joint negotiating committee, the Hollywood Division has the power to appoint (typically) 7 of the members, and NY and the RBD appoint the remaining members. Hollywood, dominated by Membership First in recent years, invariably appoints MF partisans as its committee members. However, because there are only 7 of them, they will be outvoted if the 13 AFTRA members plus the 6 NY & RBD SAG members vote differently.
When AFTRA split off from SAG in the 2008 TV-Theatrical negotiations, everything changed on the SAG side, because now the 7 MF members on the now-13-member SAG negotiating committee constituted a majority. Thus, for the first time in recent history, the MF contingent had control of the negotiating committee — but the tradeoff is that this negotiating committee represented only SAG. AFTRA was free to seek and conclude its own deal, which is what happened.
SAG — which is to say, the 7 Hollywood/MF members who controlled the committee, coupled with Alan Rosenberg and Doug Allen — was unwilling to accept the reality that its leverage was weak and the bargaining circumstances deteriorating. These 7 people were essentially the same 7 who, in the last couple of TV-Theatrical negotiation rounds, had been furious to see the AFTRA and NY/RBD committee members seemingly “sell out” SAG’s interests in these negotiations. Now that they were in the driver’s seat for the first time in decades, they were determined to prove that SAG didn’t need to settle for less in order to make a deal. They were apparently convinced that their majority on the SAG committee was enough to carry the day.
Unfortunately, they miscalculated badly, because they didn’t understand that the perceived righteousness of their cause didn’t automatically translate into wide support among the rank and file. While most SAG members were willing to give them the benefit of the doubt while negotiations were still going on, support began to erode after negotiations broke off. As July and August elapsed with no signs of progress, and only non-credible claims that some sort of double-secret behind-the-scenes meetings were taking place, members became concerned that the AMPTP was fully prepared to wait out SAG indefinitely. Then the economy started to sour, and member concern grew. The bunker mentality that gripped MF became palpable. The fall elections, which swept the slim MF majority at the national level out of power, reflected the member jitters.
Now, had Phase I not been called off for the 2008 negotiations, what would have happened? History tells us that the traditional balance of power on the joint negotiating committee would once again have facilitated reaching a deal with the AMPTP, with the AFTRA and NY/RBD votes on the joint negotiating committee providing the necessary majority. As happened in 2005 and earlier, the Hollywood board would be furious, and would campaign against ratification. The members would nonetheless approve the deal by a comfortable margin.
However, I’m not sure we can automatically conclude that the same scenario would have played out here, because the effect of having MF partisan Doug Allen as SAG’s chief negotiator would have to be factored in. His inexperience and abrasive negotiating approach might have been enough to frustrate the achievement of a deal. Indeed, if Phase I hadn’t blown up earlier, it might well have blown up in the midst of negotiations. We’ll never know.
Getting back to the original point of this comment, though, the makeup of SAG’s portion of the joint Phase I negotiating committee is foreordained to include a slight majority appointed by the Hollywood Division, with the balance of members coming from NY and RBD. This is not because of language in the Phase I agreement itself, but from other components of SAG’s governance documents. It is entirely within SAG’s discretion how to appoint its half of the negotiating committee, just as AFTRA has complete discretion over how to appoint its respective members.
VG
Excellent & accurate, VG. Plus an interesting surmise of yours re Doug Allen being in the mix.
Actually VG the only part of your analysis that is a little off are the SAG Divisional numbers. For the TV/Theatrical Contract Hollywood had 9 votes, NY 3 and RBD 1. MF was furious that they could not control the whole ball of wax in a Phase 1 negotiation. Of course, they realized they couldn’t control things in the Commercial negotiation, so they cooperated.
Hmmm … not sure where I remember the figure “7″ from. Appreciate the correction. The overall analysis remains the same, of course.
VG
I don’t know if this level of detail would have been made public, but was it really the practice in the past for the joint negotiating committee to be sending agreements to the joint board on 17-9 votes? I would find that surprising, but maybe so.
I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what happened — a 17 to 9 vote in favor. Remember, there first had to be a handshake between the negotiators on both sides of the table (SAG/AFTRA and AMPTP), which is where the vote would actually have been taken. Once the tentative deal was reached and announced, it would be sent to the joint board for approval.
Notably, in 2005, John Connolly of AFTRA and Melissa Gilbert of SAG announced in advance of the joint board vote that pro and con statements would be included in the ballot packages. This clearly signals that there was not unanimity in reaching the TV-Theatrical deal. Indeed, the Hollywood contingent campaigned vigorously against it, and while the MF members of the negotiating team were bound by confidentiality restrictions, it didn’t take a genius to figure out who came out where on the deal.
I doubt if the vote of the negotiating committee was ever made public. I haven’t found any reference to the actual joint board vote, only descriptions that the deal was “overwhelmingly” approved by the joint board.
VG
VG, do you think we would have had a better chance of obtaining a SAV later on in negotiations?
No. The reality — which the MF-led negotiating team was unwilling to accept — was that strike authorization was not possible in the circumstances that SAG found itself in for the 2008 negotiations.
Any time that negotiations stalls past a contract deadline, work is going to slow, causing people to worry about their next paycheck. Thus making a SAV harder to obtain.
That wasn’t the problem here. It was a combination of having just come off of another industry-wide strike plus uncertainty about what the SAG negotiators were doing.
I do agree with the fact that membership does need to trust its leaders with a SAV and trust that leadership will not abuse it’s power.
That was a serious concern here, as most people understood the dynamics of the situation: Strike authorization alone was not going to make any significant difference at the bargaining table. This would have meant that SAG would have no choice but to call a strike. But members were unwilling to strike based on what they were hearing. That’s why strike authorization would not have passed: Members were not willing to strike, and therefore did not want to authorize a strike. They understood that the process wouldn’t stop with strike authorization, but that a strike was a virtual certainty under the MF-led negotiating team once authorization passed.
But, I believe if this is the case than leadership SHOULD go into negotiations with a SAV vote.
What you seem to be saying is that the leadership should have deceived the members into voting for strike authorization, based on false claims that they would never call a strike. But the Writers United faction at the WGA had just pulled that same stunt on the writers, who discovered that the very people saying they had no intention of striking had called a strike shortly after being authorized to do so. SAG members would be harder to fool with that history.
No, it is NOT the “only†leverage we have, but it is a great deal of it.
I disagree. A strike authorization that is not backed up by a palpable commitment by union members to support a strike is an empty gesture. It means that even if a strike is called, it will fall apart quickly. Scab work, fi-core, non-union replacements, legal work by AFTRA, moving work overseas, the financial shakiness of members who had already been pushed to the wall by the WGA strike — all of these things would have made a solo SAG strike ineffective. Whether the strike lumbered on for months, as happened in 2000, or ended sooner, the exercise would have been futile. It was not the right tool to pull out of the toolbox at that time.
Otherwise, why are we even in a union at all?
This is classic “nothing ever happens without a strike” thinking. It’s foolish for SAG to think this way. SAG is filled with people who are in the public eye and could easily rally public opinion, if only there was a sensible effort made to do so. SAG has smart negotiators and contract analysts who can put together businesslike contract proposals. Instead, we fight with ourselves and our sister unions and never bring any of our real power to bear.
I can only remember two strike authorization votes from SAG in the last decade or so. One was for the 2000 commercials contract, and one was at least initiated in 2005 for the Interactive contract. I don’t believe the tally for the 2005 interactive contract was ever announced. As far as I can recall, there was no strike vote going into the Commercials negotiations of 2003, and there certainly was none this year, the next time there were negotiations. There was no strike vote for the 2005 TV-Theatrical negotiations, and I don’t recall one for the 2001 negotiations either (which came on the heels of the 2000 Commercials strike, so strike authorization was unlikely).
Thus, I’m having a hard time reconciling the actual history of SAG negotiations with the oft-heard statement that SAG should “routinely” obtain strike authorization before going into negotiations. The reality is that strike authorization should be saved for instances where the stakes warrant it and the membership’s mood supports it. And given my (perhaps naive) hope that Phase I joint negotiation will resume for the next TV-Theatrical round, strike authorization will require concurrence of the joint board and the joint membership.
If anyone can recall any other SAG strike authorization ballots in this time frame, please speak up.
VG