Industry News :: Pro-AFTRA effort grows

06/22/08 By Dave McNary, variety.com

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Raising the stakes in the SAG-AFTRA brawl, Tom Hanks has joined the pro-AFTRA forces in an endorsement of the smaller union's primetime deal.
Hanks has added his name to a list of more than 100 signatures as part of a campaign encouraging AFTRA's 70,000 members to vote yes on the pact over SAG's strident opposition. The pro-AFTRA letter blasts SAG's recent anti-AFTRA campaign and accuses SAG leadership of clinging to unrealistic contract demands that are "hold(ing) us all hostage."

Other signers include former SAG board members James Cromwell, Mike Farrell and Tess Harper and current board members Morgan Fairchild and Richard Masur, a former SAG president who has helped coordinate the signature-gathering effort.

Two weeks ago, Hanks and George Clooney denied an assertion by a SAG board member that they'd backed SAG's anti-AFTRA campaign.

"AFTRA has made a good deal," the letter said. "In fact, under the circumstances, it's a very good deal. As did the DGA, WGA and AFTRA net code deals, the AFTRA Exhibit A deal establishes important new principals and even improves on those deals."

SAG, which has 120,000 members, enters its 36th day of negotiations with the majors today with June 30 looming as the expiration date on its feature-primetime contract. Its leaders have harshly criticized the contract agreement reached May 28 by rival thesp union AFTRA as a cave-in to management because its lacks gains in key areas such as DVD, new media and force majeure protections. SAG's leadership has waged a vigorous campaign to persuade the 44,000 dual SAG-AFTRA cardholders to vote down the deal. SAG's hope is that such a move would force AFTRA to put aside its differences with SAG and negotiate jointly, as the two unions did for nearly 30 years until splitting this year.

Ballots in the AFTRA ratification vote are due back by July 8.

Despite the high-profile battling between the two unions, top thesps had stayed away from SAG and AFTRA politics until now. Hanks had joined Clooney, Robert De Niro and Meryl Streep in February in urging SAG leaders to begin its contract negotiations as soon as possible so the biz could avoid enduring the uncertainty involved when talks go down to the wire as they are now.

SAG began its talks with the majors April 16 after AFTRA opted to end the tradition of the unions negotiating the feature-primetime pact together. The split was fueled by a bitter jurisdictional dispute between the two.

The pro-AFTRA letter signed by Hanks and others blasts SAG leaders for forcing the industry to shut down and for asserting that voting down the AFTRA deal will force AFTRA to join SAG at the bargaining table to negotiate better terms with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.

"AFTRA will almost certainly step back and let SAG attempt to make a deal without them," the letter said. "AFTRA will not go back to the table with SAG, no matter what the SAG leadership is saying -- you just can't spend years openly vilifying another organization, destroying their work, and still expect them to come back and work cooperatively. AFTRA will let SAG go in with its list of demands (that none of the other unions got) and hold us all hostage."

The pro-AFTRA forces have received support from SAG leaders outside Hollywood. Eight former SAG New York presidents -- Joyce Gordon, Bob Kaliban, Larry Keith, Maureen Donnelly, Paul Hecht, Mel Boudrot, Eileen Henry and Paul Christie -- announced Sunday that they had endorsed the AFTRA deal.

SAG has not yet scheduled a strike authorization vote, which would take three weeks to complete and require 75% approval from those voting. Hollywood production is expected to largely stop next week, except for indie features that have SAG waivers and a few TV pilots (Daily Variety, June 17).

In Los Angeles, despite the approach of the expiration, offlot production of features is down a smallish 5% for the last four weeks to 79 permits, while TV activity has soared due partly to the lingering impact of the WGA strike, according to the FilmL.A. permit coordinating agency.

"TV dramas are up 211%, likely attributable to a shifting/shortened summer hiatus," agency spokesman Todd Lindgren told Daily Variety. "Pilots are up significantly for the same reason -- the 'traditional' pilot season (typically strong in the first four months of the year) didn't exist this year, and pilot production has been spread into later months. Reality TV has seen a gain as well."

Lindgren said he was surprised that local feature activity had remained as strong as it had with the June 30 deadline approaching. During the June 11-18 period, features in production in Los Angeles included Fox Searchlight's "500 Days of Summer," DreamWorks' "A Thousand Words" and "I Love You, Man," Columbia's "The Ugly Truth" and "Maxim's Fired Up," Lionsgate's "Crank 2: High Voltage," Starz's "Table for Three," Millennium's "Labor Pains" and Warner's "The Informant: A True Story."

"Labor Pains," starring Lindsay Lohan, has a SAG waiver.

In the meantime, SAG and the majors recessed negotiations on Friday and took the weekend off. Each side has blamed the other for the lack of progress, with SAG asserting that the congloms were not moving off any of their positions to match the guild's concessions and the AMPTP accusing SAG of stalling in order to fight the AFTRA ratification.

The majors are expected to make SAG a last, best and final offer as early as this week (Daily Variety, June 20) unless the guild backs away from an array of demands that are nonstarters for the majors. Meanwhile, the congloms suspect that SAG won't negotiate seriously until AFTRA results have been announced.

AFTRA shows covered by the deal include "Rules of Engagement," "Curb Your Enthusiasm," "Flight of the Conchords," "Dante's Cove," " 'Til Death" and "Reaper," the new CBS programs "Project Gary" and "Harper's Island" and the ABC comedy pilot "Roman's Empire." The current AFTRA contract also expires June 30.

In an email sent to AFTRA members Friday, national exec director Kim Roberts Hedgpeth issued a spirited defense of the AFTRA deal while blasting SAG on a number of fronts.

Hedgpeth described SAG's anti-ratification efforts as "a disgrace to any observer who believes in the integrity and importance of the labor movement and your rights as union members. The myth has been spread that if you turn down your contract, it does not mean a strike... The notion that one can reject a hard-fought contract, which exceeds industry 'pattern,' without backing it up with the courage of your convictions is absurd."

That brought a sharp rebuke from SAG's national exec director Doug Allen.

"It is not only appropriate but necessary that we educate our members about how this contract affects them," Allen said in a statement. "It would be irresponsible if we did not. The actors involved are our members, working for the same employers, in shows on the same networks."