September 3, 2008 by WW.

Last week attorney Jonathan Handel interviewed leaders of the two major slates running in the current SAG elections, including David Joliffe and Anne-Marie-Johnson  of Membership First, and Ned Vaughn of Unite for Strength. Now he’s announced a series of one on one interviews with some of the independent candidates - Friday afternoon, very late in the campaign (ballots are due back by Sept. 18th.)

The interviews will be streamed live from an URL linked at www.jhandel.com.

Handel’s also out with his own analysis of the stalled TV-Theatrical talks. He says his best case scenario is a contract by January.

For what it’s worth, we think his timeline is OK, but his analysis isn’t. Handel says,

“If Membership First wins the election overwhelmingly, and if SAG members overwhelmingly vote in the SAG survey (a push-poll, designed to influence people’s votes) to have the Guild continue pushing hard for a better deal (i.e., 85% or more affirmative, and a good turnout), then MF will be emboldened to call for a strike authorization vote. If that vote achieves the requisite 75% approval level (a high level, which is why it might take as much as 85% affirmative on the poll, particularly given SAG’s embarrassing failure to defeat the AFTRA deal), then SAG will have gained significant leverage against the studios. All of these conditions have to apply.”

The way we see it, the push poll has been completely discredited, now that it’s been revealed as a Trojan by which the Allens could be able to identify by name any member who voted for or against them. The 75% approval level for a strike authorization - which would be a secret ballot - seems as unlikely today as it did two months ago, despite Membership First pledges to do “education and outreach” to convince skeptical members that a strike is a good idea.

Posted in SAG Politics, Exhibit A - TV Theatrical | Print | 8 Comments »

September 3, 2008 by Editor.

The e-mail below from Unite for Strength candidate and veteran actor Ken Howard was first reported on Blogstage, where Lauren Horwitch says “it was just a matter of time” before Unite for Strength weighed in on the Allens’ push poll. 

—

Fellow SAG members,

You’ve been getting a lot of campaign email, but this is one you really should read because it’s about how your dues are being spent – or rather, misspent. And it’s about some pretty fuzzy math coming from Keith Carradine.

First your dues:  SAG leadership just spent well over $100,000 of our dues on a “special bulletin” describing how bad the AMPTP’s current contract offer is – and then asking us whether they should negotiate better terms. The answer is obvious. Of course they should. So why ask?

Is it because the leadership doubts they can negotiate any improvements?

Or is this just an excuse to use our dues money for a 12-page campaign advertisement praising the leadership for “fighting hard” and trying to persuade us to re-elect Membership First board members (who currently control SAG)? Maybe that’s why the update was timed to arrive in your mailbox during the election and was proposed and approved by board members belonging to Membership First.

But unfortunately for them, the mailer also spotlights exactly why we need to elect new leadership. For over two months we’ve been forced to work under an expired contract, costing us millions of dollars. But despite claiming months ago that they were just “hours away” from a deal, SAG leaders still haven’t negotiated a contract that’s any better than the deal signed by AFTRA in June. The mailer calls that “progress,” but when AFTRA’s deal was being voted on, SAG leaders spent another $100,000+ of our dues money trying to convince us how awful it was.

The last thing we need now is an expensive and meaningless poll asking whether we want to accept what’s on the table “without modification” or hold out for a “fair” deal. As Backstage says, that’s “kind of like asking the kids if they’d rather go out for frosty chocolate milkshakes or stay home and count the ceiling tiles”.

What we DO need from SAG leaders is for them to explain how they’re going to strengthen SAG’s hand in this and future contract negotiations. And one thing’s for sure – more fighting with AFTRA won’t help. I’m running for the SAG Board with the other Unite for Strength candidates because we know that getting the best contracts requires REAL leverage — the kind we’ll get from bringing ALL media performers into one powerful union.

Membership First attacked this obvious solution in a recent email from Keith Carradine, arguing that uniting with AFTRA would weaken SAG by “promoting AFTRA to a full 50/50 partnership.” This flies in the face of simple math: SAG members would make up 82% of a merged union. (For a closer look at the numbers please read the article below from my fellow candidate Ned Vaughn.)

We can’t afford to let emotion drive us to division and weakness any longer.
It’s time for new leadership. Please vote to Unite for Strength.

Respectfully,
Ken Howard

–

Update: Variety quotes Membership First’s Anne-Marie Johnson responding to the Howard e-mail:

“I think Ken Howard and Unite for Strength would rather that SAG members not know what’s going on,” said Johnson, who’s also a board member and on the SAG negotiating committee. “First they complain that we’re not doing anything and then they complain that we’re spending too much money trying to educate the members. It sounds as if they’d rather the members get their information by relying only on the AMPTP web site.”

Posted in SAG Politics, Exhibit A - TV Theatrical | Print | 2 Comments »

September 3, 2008 by admin.

In an astonishing admission, SAG’s Director of Governance has reportedly admitted that the postcard push poll on TV-Theatrical is not a secret ballot, and is a way for the union to track by name each member who votes against the Allens’ campaign to avoid a direct ratification vote on the “last, best and final” offer of the AMPTP. Each postcard sent to a member has a unique bar code that the union has tabbed to the member’s name, and if a member returns the vote, the union brass will have complete access to exactly how you voted.

Here’s the report from one of the regular contributors to this blog - we know his name, even though he chooses to post under a screen name (VoiceGuy).

This morning I placed a call to Integrity Voting Systems to find out some answers about the bar codes on these postcards. I was only able to leave a voicemail message. After several hours had passed I assumed that my inquiry must have been passed on to SAG for response. I was right.

at 3:45 PM today I received a telephone call from Michelle Bennett of SAG, whose title is National Director of Governance. She said she was returning my call to Integrity Voting Systems.

Here is what she told me, as best as I can reconstruct it. I asked her to let me repeat it for her to verify that I had it accurately recorded, but she refused and cut the call short.

1. The bar code is unique. It is not the SAG membership number per se, but it is uniquely associated with that member. It also shows whether the member belongs to the Hollywood Division, the NY Division, or the Regional Branch Division.

2. Repeatedly throughout the conversation Ms. Bennett stated “this is not a secret ballot,” therefore the secret ballot procedures do not apply.

3. Each member’s vote will be tallied BY NAME. In other words, a record WILL be made of who voted yes and who voted no. This information will be available to “authorized staff members” at SAG. It will not be made public (that’s the “confidentiality” assurance from the flyer).

4. So, I asked, in other words, if I send in the card and vote “no,” there will be a record available to SAG staff that I submitted that vote? Answer: Yes.

5. So, if someone said, “Give me a list of everyone in the New York division who voted ‘yes,’ that list could be compiled easily?” Answer: Yes. But why would a staff person want to make such a list, she asked.

6. “Suppose Alan Rosenberg walked in and said, ‘Give me a list of everyone who voted to accept the AMPTP offer on this postcard,’” I asked. Answer: He could not get it, because we don’t give member information out to other members.

7. “All right, then,” I asked, “suppose Doug Allen walked in and asked for that list? He’s the boss, right?” Answer: Long silence. Then: “I don’t want to deal with hypothetical questions.”

Again, many repetitions of “this is not a secret ballot” and “the Guild will maintain the confidentiality of this information.”

Why, I asked, couldn’t the cards be processed to determine validity, and to perhaps run statistics as to how many people in each division responded, without making a record of how each person voted? No good answer.

I told her that based on this information, I was not inclined to send in the card, and I suspected a lot of other people would feel the same way. Who? she asked. People I tell about this. At that point she cut the call short, refused to let me summarize what I had heard to make sure I had gotten it correctly, and declared that any further communication on this would have to be in writing.

So, there you have it. It is a Trojan Horse, and there is potential for each person’s vote to be known by an unknown circle of people within SAG. I told her that I thought members deserved to know this in connection with deciding whether to respond. She disagrees.

–

UPDATE: Steve Diamond writes on Vallywood that the Allens have tried this kind of stunt before:

This is akin to a voice vote in a public arena, something that federal labor law has outlawed for many decades when it comes to union organizing elections.

This will further undermine the claim that the vote has any legal or political significance. This is unfortunate for SAG because if the leadership is attempting to use the vote to demonstrate greater backing for their delaying strategy at the bargaining table this is not a very good way to do that.

But of course SAG’s MF leaders are even more nervous that the the membership would accept the offer in light of their failed “go it alone” strategy.

So one explanation for the bar code approach is that it serves to decrease the likelihood that union dissenters will vote thus artificially increasing the illusion of support for Membership First.

This recalls the use of union staffers to bolster the rally organized by SAG to interfere with the ratification vote of their sister union, AFTRA.

Posted in SAG Politics, Exhibit A - TV Theatrical | Print | 29 Comments »

September 3, 2008 by Editor.

Steve Diamond calls out the self promoting columnist for not understanding the meaning of the law or the word “impasse,” and for again swallowing whole a press release from the Allens. 

Posted in SAG Politics, Exhibit A - TV Theatrical | Print | No Comments »

September 3, 2008 by admin.

A regular reader pointed us to the section of the Allens’ latest “progress” report on the TV-Theatrical negotiations, included in that PushPoll Mailer you should have received via mail by now. The section talks about what the negotiating committee claims it has tentatively agreed to in the stalled talks.

WE’RE MAKING PROGRESS
SEVERAL AREAS IN WHiCH WE HAVE REACHED TENTATIVE AGREEMENT

After 44 days of formal negotiations with the full SAG/AMPTP negotiating committees, we have tentatively agreed to a number of significant proposals. While some of the proposals are acceptable and will have a positive impact on our contract, others were very difficult for your negotiators to tentatively approve. We have tentative agreement on many more issues with which we have disagreement, especially in new media. As is true in any negotiation, progress is achieved through a give-and-take process by which parties come to mutual agreement. Sometimes that’s a very painful process.

Areas in which we have tentative agreement include:
INCREASE IN MINIMUMS
SAG has tentatively agreed to an increase in minimums of 3.5% in year one, 3% in year two and 3.5% in year three of the contract.

P&H INCREASES IN YEAR 2
SAG has tentatively agreed to a .5% increase in producer P&H contributions in the second year of the contract. This brings the Producer contribution to 15%.

MONEY BREAKS
SAG has tentatively agreed to an increase to $3,000 in the “3-Day Overtime Money Break for TV” effective July 1, 2009.

NEW MEDIA
Where the Consumer Pays
On new media platforms where the consumer pays to view TV programs or feature films for a limited amount of time or a fixed
number of exhibitions, 3.6% of the distributors gross receipts (DGR) would be divided among the cast. Where the consumer pays to download to own television programs or feature films (electronic sell through), the casts would share in 5.4% of 20% of the DGR up to the first 50,000 units downloaded for features and up to the first 100,000 units downloaded for television programs.
After reaching the respective unit limits, the formulas would be increased to 9.75% of 20% of DGR for features and 10.5% of 20% of DGR for television programs. These increases in the DVD formula would only apply to downloads, not to DVDs purchased in stores. That formula remains the same.

Where the Consumer Does Not Pay
On new media platforms where the consumer does not pay and television programs are “streamed,” we have a tentative agreement. If a new program for this upcoming season were to be streamed on the Internet, it would have 24 free streaming days to make those episodes available for viewing on the website and those 24 days could begin streaming prior to or after the air date of that episode. Th en, aft er the 24 days of streaming, they would have the right to exhibit the episode for two 26-week periods if they pay 3% of the applicable minimum for each 26-week period. In the case of a day performer who works one day, that comes to approximately $22 for each 26-week period or $44 for the year. After the year following the streaming window, the performers on the episode would be entitled to share 6% of DGR. Th e 3% payment for the two 26-week periods would increase to 3.5% in 2010. For theatrical motion pictures on these platforms, the cast will share in 3.6% of DGR from the initial streaming of the picture.

CLIP CONSENT
SAG has tentatively agreed to a proposal which preserves library clip permissions. Prospective clips permission will be subject to individual negotiations, but outstanding issues include protections for actors (such as not allowing clip permission to be a condition of employment).

The reader’s question —- isn’t that word for word the AFTRA Exhibit A Agreement? You remember, the one the Allens spent $250,000 in a failed effort to defeat? That’s what they negotiated in 44 days of face to face sessions?

Posted in SAG Politics, Exhibit A - TV Theatrical | Print | No Comments »

September 3, 2008 by Editor.

That fab new SAG website, the one reported to be hundreds of thousands of dollars over budget under the leadership of Communications Committee chair Justine Bateman, went down this past weekend for tweaks, updates and repairs, and - guess what. The “facelift” made it a lot harder to check up on the past statements of the Allens, and the positions of the union.

 Those past statements have simply been “disappeared, by removing the links to anything before July 2008. Of course, it could just be an accident.

Posted in SAG Politics | Print | 6 Comments »