About Us/Contact
Welcome to our new readers, and to those of you who’re returning for a second or third look! We may not know all of you by name, but we’re glad to see you here.
This site was started in late 2007, but really get going in February 2008. Its readership has spiked every time there has been a crisis in SAG. Lately that’s usually meant something bad has has happened between SAG and AFTRA. We interpret the spikes as meaning that people really do care about their unions. And that’s good.
Working together, we hope to make a difference. That’s what unions should be all about.
WHY WE’RE HERE
A number of other websites offer commentary on the Screen Actors Guild and its administration. Almost all of those sites are affiliated with and serve as propaganda arms of one or another of the factions that make SAG the uniquely fractured union that it is, beset by internal rivalries and frictions, virtually unable to run meetings without open warfare amongst the members of its elected boards of directors. These stress fractures run not just between the various Divisions and Branches of SAG, but include schisms within the Divisons and Branches themselves.
This site aspires to becoming a place for plain discussion of the arguments on all sides of the issues that divide SAG, in the hope that with clear exposition and fact checking, members will have the information on which to begin to form a consensus. You’ll be able to find late developments here and as much detail as you like here. Whether you have questions or comments, you’re invited to join the discussion anywhere and everywhere on the site.
It may be good or it may be bad, but it’s our plan to spend a lot of time on stuff that’s going to be really interesting only to policy wonks and serious activists. We’re going to try to play it right down the middle, and serve as a neutral source of information for those who care.
Suffice it to say that relations between SAG and AFTRA are at the lowest point in the past 35 years, engaged in open conflict. SAG National Executive Director Doug Allen has become a polarizing figure in this battle.
Whether you regard him as doing a great job or view him as a destructive force is likely to depend on whether or not you are an adherent of the Membership First faction of SAG. What’s on this site is how we see the issues.
WHO ARE WE?
One of the (many) things we never thought of when we started talking about this site was that it might matter who’s doing the writing here. This either goes to show you can’t anticipate everything, or that we forgot a basic Hollywood principle: for those who don’t want to think for themselves (and that’s a lot of folks, particularly when it comes to union stuff), it isn’t what someone says, it’s who says it that matters.
We disagree. We deliberately kept our names out of it because we didn’t want it to be a matter of what films, shows and campaigns we’ve done, what we’ve booked that dictates how people read our notes. Either you agree, or you disagree - with the ideas we’ve put forth, not with us personally. And that’s if we put forth any original ideas at all.
If you find we’ve made mistakes (and we already have, and have fixed those we know about) let us know. We don’t care what your credits are, we care about getting it right.
P.S. One change we’ve made since we started is to be more careful about labeling anything that is our opinion or analysis. That change came as a result of a series of suggestions from a reader - her criticism of the way we’d been handling commentary was good, and we adopted them.
We really do care what you think, and appreciate the comments.
WHO REPRESENTS ACTORS?
Both SAG and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) have long and honorable histories of representing actors and other performers, including singers, dancers, stunt players and, in AFTRA’s case, recording artists, promo announcers and broadcasters. SAG has a substantially larger membership than AFTRA, by about a 12 to 7 ratio. SAG’s membership was bolstered in 1992 when it absorbed the then failing Screen Extras Guild, which had been an independent union for 46 years. The takeover came after SAG twice, in the 1980s, rejected merger with SEG.
SAG does not publish statistical reports on the earnings levels of its members, however, in 2003, during the course of its most recent failed attempt to merge with AFTRA, it did divulge some statistics, revealing that 85% of its members who did not also have AFTRA cards earned less than $10,000 per year under SAG contracts, and that of those who had both SAG and AFTRA cards, 64% still earned less than $10,000 per year. AFTRA’s statistics were better, but not dramatically, and were made perhaps less of a direct comparison because they covered all of AFTRA’s categories, not just actors.
At the other end of the spectrum, the 2003 statistics revealed that 190 SAG only members earned more than $500,000 per year (the highest earnings level in the report) while 904 dual card holders (and 441 AFTRA-only members) achieved that level.
Update: A recent internet posting (registration required) by noted actress Kathy Joosten quoted SAG statistics showing that over the past ten years, on average, a stunning 78% of SAG members earned less than $7500 per year from SAG jurisdiction contracts.
WHAT’S HAPPENING NOW?
SAG and AFTRA are at war.
Despite the chronic and massive unemployment of SAG members and the export of SAG work to other nations. But the critical issue right now is the collapse of Phase 1 joint bargaining. The recent revelation that SAG’s National Executive Director, Douglas Allen, has some disturbing history, including crossing his own union’s picket lines, is but the icing on the cake these days.
These problems arise at a time when SAG is facing the expiration of numerous major contracts with producers, and as other entertainment industry unions grapple with many of the same issues that face SAG. But with the collapse of Phase 1 amidst raiding activity by SAG, Allen and the Membership First faction are expected to again push hard now for an amendment to the SAG constitution that would amend eliminate the requirement of Phase 1 joint bargaining with AFTRA.
With your help and comments, we’ll keep this site as active as we can, recognizing that unless we do it, members will be left with only the propaganda sites and the official union site, which many now criticize as having become nothing much more than spin for the Membership First faction, which currently, with its relatively narrow majority, controls the National Board of Directors of SAG.
Your comments are always welcome. E-mail editor@sagwatch.net
In June 2008 we switched from a website format to a WordPress based blog. We’ve tried to preserve all our old content, but a server hit definitely cost us some material. If you see something out of order please let us know, and if you have some material that we lost, please pass it along!