Campaign Watch: The Handel Interviews - Handel’s Reaction

We’ve already posted our interpretation of entertainment lawyer Jonathan Handel’s live interviews last week with Membership First leaders David Joliffe and Anne-Marie Johnson, and with Unite for Strength’s Ned Vaughn. Now Handel has posted his own reactions.

Handel called Membership First a continuing disappointment, writing “they have no answer, other than to simply wish AFTRA away and declare that SAG is the actors union. Spending Labor Day at the beach is a fine thing, but sticking one’s head in the sand isn’t so effective.” But he also found Unite for Strength’s leader “vague” and “not the breath of fresh air that I’d been hoping for.”

As we did, Handel noted a lack of definitive answers from all the candidates. But Handel, in our view, strays from logic when he writes about his concerns regarding any plan to merge SAG and AFTRA.

“Any unification is going to have to give the former AFTRA board some kind of equal say in policies and decisions, yet SAG will probably insist on proportionate representation, which would swamp AFTRA. Why would AFTRA accept this – and why would SAG accept the alternative?”

That’s not the concern we’d expect from AFTRA, and certainly wasn’t the issue in 2003, the last time a merger plan was formulated. We’d expect AFTRA’s leadership to continue to worry about the stability of the Hollywood branch and its political leadership.

Right now the one thing AFTRA has going for it is that its membership and leadership - even in Hollywood - are focused on the things we think are most important for a union, keeping members working and consistently improving wages and working conditions. The union has consistently chosen solid gains over pie in the sky demands, and its members’ earnings depend upon that kind of pragmatic leadership continuing.

We’d note that SAG’s membership and leadership outside of Hollywood seems to mirror AFTRA’s businesslike approach. Only in Hollywood does the political landscape cycle between the two opposites.

If SAG can demonstrate that it is ready to keep its focus on the possible, and not let the perfect become the killer of the good, and can do it over more than just a single election cycle, then we’d think AFTRA’s leadership would once again begin to trust enough to work together with the new and improved SAG.

But we wouldn’t expect any quick moves, even if Unite for Strength sweeps the current elections.

A postscript: Handel says he’ll have interviews with some independent candidates for the SAG boards this week. Election results are to be announced September 19.

This entry was posted on August 31, 2008 at 10:13 and is filed under SAG Politics, SAG-AFTRA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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