Members of the Screen Actors Guild are currently voting on a long-awaited contract. Here's a video that runs almost ten minutes which features a lot of familiar faces explaining why they're voting against it…
Not being a member of SAG, I don't get a ballot…but I have read and heard a lot of the pro and con arguments. The video above gives some (not all) of the arguments against. The "pro" arguments all seem to sidestep the question of what's actually in the contract and to make two points. One is that SAG is so deeply divided that it cannot mount the kind of strike and solidarity that would be necessary to improve it. The other is that the contract's expiration date is roughly the same as that of all the other major Hollywood unions. There is, therefore, a chance that all those unions could link arms in a few years, sing a few choruses of "Kumbaya" and mount an all-out, shut-the-town-down-'til-we-get-what-we-deserve work stoppage.
That's possible. But it's also so unprecedented and world-shaking that it's hard to have a lot of confidence that it will happen. Producers aren't, for the most part, stupid. They have calendars. They must be pretty sure they can head that off…which doesn't mean they can. Maybe they can, maybe they can't. Still, it seems foolish to me to take a bad deal this time because you're confident you can get it all back (and more) next time.
The first argument has some merit and it sadly reminds me of the way my union, the Writers Guild of America, folded in 1985 and took a terrible, terrible deal. In fact, it was such a rotten deal that it not only cost us billions but — and read the rest of this sentence carefully — it put us so far down that it practically guaranteed we'd have to strike in '88 just to dig our way out a little from the pit into which we'd been dumped.
I usually don't like penile analogies in labor matters. A contract or a strike should be about arriving at a deal that works for all parties, not about proving that someone is tougher than someone else. Still, the best way to describe what went on in the WGA back then is as follows: In '85, we gave up one testicle rather than go to war and then in '88, we had to go to war in order to keep the other one. It would have been a lot easier and less costly to fight the first war.
Alas, what happened in 1985 was that our leadership splintered and collapsed. Those of us who wanted to fix bayonets and charge into battle looked at the front of the hall and didn't see anyone capable of leading us to the men's room, let alone to war. Everyone up there was too busy fighting with everyone else. I voted against the contract but I could certainly understand the resignation of my friends who agreed it was a sucky deal but felt the game was lost and it was time to move on.
I fear SAG is now in a comparable position. What the WGA and DGA got was acceptable. The SAG offer is the same in some regards, different in others, and it adds in a lot of terms that are unique to actors and quite pernicious. In an ideal world (which despite the election of Barack Obama, we don't seem to have just yet), the actors would demonstrate grand solidarity, vote it into oblivion and within 48 hours, the producers would have a new, more benevolent one on the table. For lack of unity and leadership, that ain't gonna happen. If the contract does fail, which seems doubtful, it will be by a small margin. That's like going into a war where the other side has a nuclear arsenal and you're armed with Daisy Air Rifles.
I don't know what's going to happen except that SAG doesn't have the kind of leadership necessary to fight this thing. The Board of Directors vote to recommend this contract was 53.38% to 46.62%…pretty much split right down the ol' middle. There will probably be a lot of members who'll vote Yes because though they know the deal stinks, they feel like my friends did in '85.
How would I vote? I'd vote No but I'd brace myself for losing this one…or maybe worse, winning by a tiny margin. But fortunately, I don't have to vote. I'm not a professional actor whose career is involved with the Screen Actors Guild. At the moment, that feels like a good thing not to be.