I've watched the internal divisions at the Screen Actors Guild with sadness. A united SAG, and a strong creators' labor movement, would be a great boon for all workers. But, it seems to be getting worse. Here is a short primer--and why you should care.
I've written about the building strife recently. The new development comes via The New York Times, though this is also being covered elsewhere:
Facing internal strife over stalled contract negotiations, Hollywood’s largest union decided late on Monday to postpone plans for a strike authorization vote and instead called for an emergency meeting of its national board in Los Angeles next month.
The abrupt change in plans by the Screen Actors Guild reflected fierce disagreements within it about the wisdom of seeking strike authorization during an economic recession.
In recent weeks scores of boldface-name actors have endorsed a petition urging members to reject a strike; many others have expressed support for the measure. The union has doubled down on an information campaign urging members to vote yes.
The authorization vote had been scheduled to begin with the mailing of ballots on Jan. 2, and was to last three weeks. Alan Rosenberg, the president of the union, said two weeks ago that approval of the strike authorization would send "a strong message" to the studios.
But opposition to a strike has stifled the union’s negotiating abilities. The actors’ contract with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents Hollywood’s major production companies and studios, expired on June 30.
The fact is the SAG leadership simply does not have the 75 percent voting margin it needs to pass the strike authorization. It is smart to put the vote off, for now, and try to unify the union before pushing ahead.
My own opinion: Even though, if I was a SAG member, I would vote for the strike authorization, SAG cannot strike now. It would be suicide.
But, the bigger question the SAG strife poses is about the future of the creators' rights movement. A bit of background and analysis.
The media industry has evolved dramatically in the past decade, partly due to technology--which brought together what we used to think of as "movie studios" with companies that were simply distributing what ever could be moved as digital content (voice, pictures, sound)--and partly due to policy (the abandonment of any kind of anti-trust enforcement and, actually, a policy pursued by both Republicans and Democrats that encouraged massive consolidation and the creation of a communications industry--see Clinton-era Telecommunications Act of 1995).
While all this was happening, the creators' unions changed very little. More than a decade ago, I suggested to the broad creators' movement that we really only needed one major union in the industry because we were all working for the same companies and the issues were pretty much the same, namely the control over how content was used. The fights over copyright and residuals may have some particular wrinkles here and there--but not much.
A quick digression/definition: I think of the "creators movement" as one that encompasses every organization, large and small, that represents creators, from novelists to actors to graphic artists. But, for the purposes of focus here, I'm discussing only the unions/guilds that work within what we generally used to call the "movie industry".
Why has unity or merger eluded the creators' movement? I'd say a few reasons:
First, history. People hang on to organizational pride, even when the outside world has changed.
Second, the Hershey Kiss dilemma. In the main unions/guild--SAG, AFTRA and the Writers Guild--a very tiny number of people make a lot of money, a slightly larger number make a respectable living and the vast majority (probably 95 percent at any given moment) are unemployed. Think of the little tip of a Hershey Kiss (the working creator) and, then, the bulb at the bottom (the rest).
Third, because of the Hershey Kiss problem, there is a vast economic divide between the membership. The elite creators have very little connection to the guilds/unions--they think they don't need the union because most of them rely on their personal agents to make their deals. The people who make a respectable living--middle-class income with health insurance and a pension--have a better grasp of what the union brings, but they are a small percentage of the universe of guild members. The vast majority who are unemployed include a lot of old (literally) veterans who have a union card, perhaps haven't worked in 20 years but are willing to vote to strike because it really has no effect on them.
Fourth, arrogance, hubris, and blindness. For too long, the creators thought, "well, they can't make movie without us so we'll always be secure". It is true that some of the business still depends on "talent". But, the world is changing rapidly.
Let me explain by example. I know someone named Sam who is an avid movie-maker. Using his Mac and Final Cut, he has made 3 movies already. Yes, they are short and a bit rough and you haven't seen them in the theaters yet.
But, Sam is only 16. In five years, if he sticks with the craft, he's going to be churning out more movies--for very low cost. The distribution channels will be much wider by then and there will be advertisers who will pay to sponsor Sam's films. Consumers will get those films on their IPods or whatever other device they feel is convenient. And there will be thousands of Sams out there--and they will have tens of thousands of willing associates: actors, writers, and other technical folks who will be able to digitize characters pretty easily.
I am not saying big-budget films are a thing of the past. But, the decentralization of content is a historical inevitability. And what is coming with it is a huge NON-UNION workforce, mainly younger people.
And the guilds/unions have not adapted to this enough. Yes, there has been some focus on trying to organize non-union animation and non-union reality TV. But, the resources being spent on those efforts are small. I've seen this, if you'll pardon the expression, movie before: in the early 1990s, a number of independent film companies opened their doors and cranked out a whole slew of films, made largely with non-union labor, principally, the behind-the-camera workers. They had this pool of workers because film schools were turning out armies of talented people who could not get work and, in many cases, were excluded from membership in the International Alliance of Theatrical and Stagehand Employees (IATSE).
Fifth, creators' themselves. Mineworkers, steelworkers, autoworkers, hospital workers and the whole range of professions, blue-collar and white-collar, generally do not question the notion that you can get more as a collective force than on your own. Actually, in lots of jobs, like mining, workers know that they live or die solely because they work as a team.
Creators, on the other hand, are absolutely sure that they succeed because of one thing and one thing only: themselves. It is their own talent that is special, unlike anyone else.
Talent is certainly important. But, making a good living because of one's talent is not contradictory to collective action. That duality too often escapes creators' thinking and leads to a lack of interest in guild participation.
Sixth, staff-driven guilds. The top elected leadership of most unions works full-time for the union. In the creators' guilds, the top leadership are volunteers (usually reimbursed for meeting and other incidental expenses); the guilds are run, day-to-day, by professional staffs. That is not inherently a bad thing--and the creators' guilds have some very talented, hard-working people in-house.
But, those guilds are also run by a top executive who makes a very big salary, anywhere from $300,000 to $600,000-a-year (I think the Directors Guild executive director earns even more). That is a person who is unlikely to be gung-ho on a merger with another sister union if that merger might result in one less executive director position.
Anyway, there are more reasons to list. The current mess SAG finds itself is partly due to the above, which has fostered schisms within the Guild for almost 20 years. But, the other problem is that SAG was undercut by its sister union, AFTRA.
I explored this earlier this year. After the Writers Guild strike ended in February, SAG and AFTRA got caught in a very dumb squabble--dumb because it made no sense, could have been resolved if some grown-ups had intervened and, ultimately, caused a deep schism between the two guilds. The upshot: AFTRA cut its own deal with the industry, leaving SAG hanging out on its own.
You can argue the virtue of each organization's purity and righteousness but, respectfully, you have to have some moral clarity about who the enemy is and distinguish between a major internal disagreement versus the need to maintain unity vis a vis some of the most powerful economic powers on the planet. Personally, I have lost some respect for AFTRA's leadership and would be leery about depending on those folks in the future.
So, here we are. The truth is SAG can't strike. It does not have the unity and cohesiveness that the WGA had last year; I walked those picket lines every day in those first few weeks and, in the rain, sleet, snow and freezing temperatures, WGA had mobs of people out there every day because the union spent months preparing people (by the way, I gained an enormous amount of respect way back then for Tina Fey, who showed up most days, without fanfare and not seeking the limelight, and walked the lines for hours). SAG won't be able to get a better deal at this point.
But the bigger question is: what comes next? The creators' unions have got to change their way of doing business. It is crazy for the unions to continue trying to cut their own deals and act alone. It is crazy for a creators' movement to be fragmented at the very moment when it needs unity.
Even if you are not a creator, you should care. A unified, effective creators' movement can make a big difference in the fortunes of the labor movement, both because of the place cultural content has in the economy and because of the way content shapes our perceptions.
Where are the grown-ups?