SAG Board OKs Deal With AMPTP for Film, TV

Includes effective annual wage increases of 3.5%; two-year agreement ends June 30, 2011.

By Lauren Horwitch

Published: April 19, 2009

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It was a productive weekend for Hollywood.

After a nine-month standoff between actors and producers, a series of decisive moves between labor and management heralded what appeared to be the end of a long, cold silence for the entertainment industry's key players.

On Sunday, the Screen Actors Guild's national board approved a tentative agreement between the union and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers covering film and TV work, which was struck on Friday.

The board voted 53.38 percent to 46.62 percent to recommend the contract soon after 4 p.m., according to a SAG statement.

SAG's task force -- headed by the national board's dominant faction Unite for Strength -- won the battle over the date of the two-year contract's expiration date. The approved pact will expire June 30, 2011 -- the same date AFTRA's primetime TV contract is set to expire. The WGA's contract with the studios' group will expire a month earlier. Hopefully, this will allow the Hollywood unions to collaborate on their negotiation strategies.

In order to solidify the 2011 date, SAG's task force took the issue of force majeure off the table. Force majuere ensures that producers will pay actors a percentage of their salaries in case of a work stoppage out of the guild's control, such as a strike by another union. SAG contends that the studios owe actors

as much as $10 million in force majuere payments that should have been paid during last year's writers' strike.

For now, SAG members will have to negotiate with their employers individually to obtain those payments.

And Saturday, the guild along with the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists unanimously approved new contracts covering conditions for the shooting of commercials, worth about $36 million in additional payments.

The new contract, struck with a joint policy committee for the Association of National Advertisers and the American Association of Advertising Agencies, added $21 million to health and pension funds, and provides a new structure for commercials for the Internet and other new media.

The contract between SAG and the AMPTP will be sent to SAG's rank-and-file membership with the board's recommendation to ratify in early May.

SAG's negotiations with the AMPTP ended bitterly last February when the studios insisted that the new contract expire in 2012.

Except for the earlier expiration date and no force majeure, the proposed agreement is similar to the deal offered by the studios last fall. It includes 3.5 percent annual increases, including a three percent wage increase, a .5 percent pension and health contribution and a 3.5 percent wage increase in the contract's second year.

SAG's statement infers that the new-media structure included in the agreement is the same as stated in the AMPTP's "last, best and final offer" -- the same terms that AFTRA, the WGA and DGA have already accepted.

The guild stated the proposed deal includes "a new media structure that tracks those achieved by other industry unions, resulting in gains for actors including jurisdiction on all derivative, made-for new media productions ... [and] residuals for ad-supported streaming of feature films and television programs."

However, the statement did not include details of the new-media structure, other than to note that the residuals for exhibition of TV and theatrical movies on consumer pay platforms are greater than the DVD residuals.

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Comments

December 10, 2009, 7:12PM
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves 199 Says

November 15, 2009, 4:19AM
Gag13 Says

For the future of the profession, I'm urging actors to vote NO on the tentative theatrical agreement.games

April 20, 2009, 10:15AM
SAG is a little less embarrassing now Says

Here is what was gained by firing Doug Allen - there is a board recommended contract now. The fact that this deal hasn't changed much only demands one to ask what the hell Doug Allen accomplished. He accomplished nothing other than weakening SAG, wasting time, and further embarrassing actors. This is the first decent news to come out of SAG in at least a year. The only thing remembered in the next elections is who to remove. The next step is cleaning out this cancerous group of "membership first". Join the adults of the WGA, DGA and IATSE who have all made functioning deals without any of this drama and destructiveness.

April 20, 2009, 1:17AM
mheister Says

The fireworks in the graphic for this story may be a bit premature. The national board vote was very close by union contract recommendation standards, primarily because the tentative agreement so closely resembles the AFTRA contract as well as the widely-reviled "last best final" offer from the AMPTP.

The proponents of this tentative agreement face a lot of uncomfortable questions, like why new national majority NED pick David White failed to improve in any substantive fashion on fired NED Doug Allen's supposedly "failed" strategy. It is also fair to ask, given Unite for Strength's position on new media during the last election, why they are congratulating themselves on a deal that breaks their campaign promises.

The argument that this the best they could do carries no water either. If the new national majority (AKA the corporate appeasers) had joined with the other faction, Membership First, in supporting a Strike Authorization Vote, it is quite likely they would have gotten the 75% necessary for a labor action. That would very likely have been enough to convince the moguls to bargain in good faith, as they had just come off a bruising WGA strike.

What we have instead is capitulation to the AMPTP. This deal would set an extremely dangerous precedent in new media at a time when the studios and television companies are pushing full-steam ahead with the migration of content distribution to the Internet and mobile devices.

Such precedents in the past have been rather durable, DVD being the case in point. Approval of the SAG deal would make it all the harder next time to make any substantive changes in new media compensation.

For the future of the profession, I'm urging actors to vote NO on the tentative theatrical agreement.

April 19, 2009, 11:57PM
James Tripp Says

This is a bad deal. What was gained by firing Doug Allen? Now in addition to paying Allen’s salary, the membership is paying for David White and John McGuire as well. Vote no, and remember the union busters—James Cromwell, Amy Brenneman, Richard Masur, Ned Vaughn and company in the next election.

April 19, 2009, 11:07PM
xinunus Says

THATS GREAT!! THE TALENT IN HOLLYwood ALREADY SUCKS. THIS WILL JUST MAKE IT WORSE.

DOES EVERYONE OUT THERE NOT REALIZE THAT UNIONS MAKE THINGS WORSE?

UNIONS IN HOLLYwood ARE THE REASON WE KEEP SEEING A REHASH OF THE SAME OLE UNTALENTED ACTORS..

PATHETIC..