AFTRA & Screen Actors Guild Strike

by Joan Debow

On the day I write this article, the AFTRA & Screen Actors Guild (SAG) strike against the advertising industry will be in its fifth bitter month. As bitter as it is for those affected, it also is the strike that no one knows about.

"This is Boston" you say; "how many people could be impacted in Boston?" Well, in fact several hundred actors in Boston are directly affected by the loss of income, and in the long run every member and future member across the country will be affected by the financial losses to the unions and Health and Pension funds. So I say to those readers who have worked on a local production with a talented union actor on a commercial, industrial, or even an independent low-budget film, that is the face you should see when you ask yourself "who’s impacted?" I even wonder if local producers might feel the results of this strike as seasoned local actors seek new careers where an income and health benefits does not require such struggle and strife.

On August 23rd we held a "Stop the Rollbacks Rally" in Copley Square in front of the lunch time crowd. Local and national celebrity Jimmy Tingle emceed the event, which included inspiring speeches given by Tony V, Bobby Haynes of the AFL-CIO, actress Maureen Donnelly, longtime NYC deejay Dan Ingram, and others. Shear Madness players performed hilarious spoofs that highlighted the actors’ plight. There we all were. Two hundred union and non-union supporters together in solidarity, with a stage, a PA system, and two hundred helium balloons, distributing 1000 fliers highlighting the issues to all walking past the front of Trinity Church. (Hard to miss, you would think. But in spite of our issuing a press release to the local media, the coverage was negligible.)

In the past four months picketing activity has taken place all over the country. Commercial production has essentially been shut down in Los Angeles, and greatly slowed in New York and Chicago. In Boston we know that local agencies like Arnold Communications, Mullen Advertising and Hill Holliday, to name a few, have successfully continued to produce commercials using scab talent for McDonald’s, Volkswagen, Babson College, and Marshall’s Stores. However, Boston non-union talent is frequently greeted by some of the most talented local union members at the door of scab casting sessions run by Tighe & Doyle, Boston Casting, and Collinge Pickman Casting. Non-union actors, attending the casting sessions, are asked to consider that auditioning will only hurt their own future union. AFTRA/SAG picketers in Oregon, Ohio, Los Angeles, and Chicago have slowed down production at General Motors plants and parts distribution centers, and have picketed AT&T headquarters. In the rest of the country, retail sites and dealerships are being picketed, including the AT&T Wireless Store at Government Center in Boston, and local Chevrolet, Buick, and Cadillac Dealerships in Arlington and Newton–all with the intention of raising public awareness and putting pressure on the advertisers.

A constant challenge that we face during this strike is the media blackout. The lack of coverage has led a large number of Los Angeles actors to cancel their subscription to the L.A. Times, each and every one vocalizing that the lack of coverage of the AFTRA/SAG strike was the reason for cancellation. After several weeks passed, a reporter for the paper researched and documented in an article that the complaints were valid. The coverage of the AFTRA/SAG strike had been far below that of an earlier janitor strike. Los Angeles, a center of the industry, is home to 40,000 Screen Actors Guild members.

A new book called IT’S THE MEDIA, STUPID by John Nichols and Bob McChesney states, "Today, fewer than 10 multinational media conglomerates — Time-Warner, Disney, Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp, Viacom, Sony, Seagram, AT&T/Liberty Media, Bertelsmann, and GE — dominate most of the American mass media landscape. The range and diversity of their holdings is astounding." It explains why newspapers and television stations refuse to bite the hand that feeds them, or in some cases (e.g. AT&T) bite their own hand, by publicizing the actors’ struggle.

Nor does the ad industry want to allow actors union representation in the area of Internet advertising. Why? Because it’s an area within the industry that is growing at such a phenomenal rate they would love to keep labor unions out of it. Given where the technology is going, if they keep union representation out of the Internet, maybe they can banish the unions forever from advertising. According to a Reuters report, "Less than one year after Internet ad revenues topped $1 billion, they hit $1.95 billion in the January-March period of this year, the Internet Advertising Bureau said. Based on figures from PriceWaterhouseCoopers, which conducted the report for the industry group, spending on Internet ads in the period were up 9.9 percent from the fourth quarter of 1999 and 182 percent from the first quarter of last year." It does not take a genius to understand that Internet advertising is big business, and with advancing digital technology, some Internet hybrid will be the delivery for commercially sponsored programming.

On September 13th when the unions go back to negotiations with the Federal Mediators’ help, they go with all intentions of negotiating a deal with the advertisers. On the eve of returning to negotiations, the unions’ negotiators released this statement: "Over the past several weeks, our members slowed down commercial production, disrupted shoots and forced some JPC [the ad industry’s Joint Policy Committee] companies to limit production schedules. Unfortunately, we also witnessed one of our own suffer a heart attack on the line and die shortly thereafter. The loss of a life and other negative aspects to this strike cry out for a solution. There has been enough negative publicity and polarization. Now it’s time to sit down and negotiate a fair and equitable contract." If, when you read this in October, the unions are still out on strike, then there is only one conclusion to be drawn. The industry is determined to eliminate the possibility of a middle class income for the non-celebrity actor, and has once again stood firm on proposals that seem bent on breaking the actors’ unions.

For daily updates on this strike visit their web sites at www.sag.org and www.aftra.com.

(This article is solely the opinion of the writer and is not intended to represent an official position of Screen Actors Guild or the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.)

Joan Debow is the Director of Freelance Contracts in the Boston office of AFTRA and Screen Actors Guild