Things are just getting worse and worse for the Screen Actors Guild. That big around-the-clock strategy meeting ended without a firm plan of action and divisions within the union are even deeper than ever before. Chief Negotiator Doug Allen was not fired, as many demanded, but he's clearly not the guy to bind things back together. His latest idea is a terrible one. He is now proposing that SAG put the producers' last offer to a vote of the entire membership. This is the offer that the SAG negotiators and Board of Directors turned down months ago as utterly unacceptable. Such a vote would probably make a bad situation worse. Here's why.
When a union negotiates with management, each side has demands they do not seriously expect will be in the final deal…things they ask for just so they can trade them off in the late stages of negotiation. The AMPTP is still demanding some things they're prepared to drop…and so is SAG. Call them bargaining chips…and of course, the longer these things go, the more once-serious demands turn into bargaining chips. To cite one biggie: SAG, right now, is probably going to have to abandon its quest for a substantial increase in DVD fees.
To vote on the last AMPTP offer is to vote on an offer with all the producers' bargaining chips still in place. To accept it is for SAG to give up all its bargaining chips without getting anything in return.
Obviously, it would be dreadful for the SAG rank-and-file to vote to do that. But rejecting it would also probably be disaster because it wouldn't get defeated by more than 80% of the membership, which is about what it would take to put the AMPTP on the defensive and change the game.
The members of SAG are weary, frustrated, angry, scared, divided and — most of all, worst of all — they don't see any effective stewardship. Those who side with Mr. Allen and SAG President Alan Rosenberg (and many do) question whether they can lead a union where so many members are circulating petitions demanding their ouster. It's one thing to want to charge into battle…quite another to believe there's some workable path to victory out there. SAG has splintered and no one in either faction looks at their leaders and sees someone with the power and organization to command a long war.
That's kind of what happened when the Writers Guild did its spectacular belly-flop in 1985. A lot of members thought the offer was abominable. It was…though I don't think any of us realized at the time how abominable. We thought it was a turd about the size of Kansas and it turned out to be more like the Louisiana Purchase. Even at Kansas-sized level, we were quite prepared to storm the beaches and take no prisoners…if (huge IF) we had the leadership in place to do that. We didn't.
Our guild's board and Executive Director (who was also our Chief Negotiator) were divided and so was the membership. A hefty-sized minority thought the deal was fine, the battle was too treacherous and we should take what we could get without a struggle. The majority wanted to fight but it wasn't 80+% of the Guild. The vote to strike was tepid — enough to strike but not enough to scare the other side. And even those us who voted to walk were arguing about which direction. "We're in no shape to fight this," a lot of my friends said as they voted for a contract they thought was lousy. Sometimes, you have to cut your losses and get out with your BVDs intact.
So if SAG votes on that last contract offer, they're screwed either way like it says in my subject line. If they accept it, they get the worst possible deal they could get in their present situation…a deal they could have gotten last June, which makes the last six months of squabbling and uncertainly look pointless and self-destructive.
But then if they reject it, they expose a bottom line. It would fail by ten points (if that many) and then the AMPTP could say, "Fine…we can wait two weeks, drop one minor bargaining chip and then announce that SAG has 30 days to accept it or we're pulling it off the table. That will win over enough people to make it pass." And if they thought that, they'd probably be right. By that point, enough SAG members would be worried about the utter destruction of their union that they'd rush to grab it.
Okay, so it's a lose/lose situation to vote on that offer. What if they don't? What happens then, Mr. Wizard? The other option is the strike authorization vote: Give the negotiators the power to call a work stoppage if the AMPTP refuses to improve the proposal. And the reason that's not a good option is that the AMPTP is no longer afraid of a SAG strike, especially one that would pass by a very narrow margin…if it passed at all. It very well might not; not with the economy circling the plughole and so many members unsure if their leaders could work together long enough to order in lunch. Some are even unsure who those leaders might be next week. (Several SAG blogs are running a "Doug Allen Deathwatch.")
The SAG constitution says that they need a 70% [CORRECTION:] 75% vote to strike. There seems to be enough opposition around that it's questionable they can get that. If they can, they surely can't get much more than that…which puts them in the same situation: Management will know it doesn't have to improve the deal much, if at all, to win the necessary votes. They may even be emboldened enough to not drop the bargaining chips they were once willing to toss.
In the meantime, the clock ticks away. The WGA achieved some amount of clout last year by threatening to make a shambles of the Academy Awards. This year, the ceremony is on February 22, one month from today. So with no SAG vote scheduled, the union has lost that opportunity. AFTRA, which took the producers' crummy offer, is signing contracts for shows which might have been SAG. And with each passing day, the belief that SAG leadership doesn't have it together grows stronger and stronger, as do worries that the whole union may collapse.
As I hope my tone conveys, I'm horrified that it's come to this. I'm not a SAG member but I've been rooting for them all the way and if they ever do strike, I'll be out there on the picket lines with a "WGA Supports SAG" placard. I think their cause is right and that this all represents an immense failure of strategy. Alas, in this world, that's the reason a lot of righteous crusades don't go the distance. Please, please…somebody pull this Guild together and prove me wrong.