Birth of a Game-Changer: SAG-AFTRA Numbers

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.”  – Margaret Mead

Although it may seem unlikely that the above statement could apply in our business, it turns out that several SAG-AFTRA Twin Cities members — specifically Sue Scott, Jim Miller, Cathy Fuller, Tammara Melloy and Tena May Gallivan — took the sentiment to heart. After multiple years of work, they are now launching the result of their efforts to change our local union work world: SAG-AFTRA Numbers, an online commercials and corporate/educational rates calculator providing simple, streamlined union rate estimates. The calculator did not magically appear overnight. In fact, it took four years from its conception under the legacy AFTRA Twin Cities Local to the pilot launch of the live beta website.

The project began in 2011, as a result of local members’ concerns about recapturing Twin Cities commercial and non-broadcast work. A small committee of members, headed by Scott, began discussing  options to reach out to the local production community. They concluded that a major roadblock to growing union work in the Twin Cities was producers’ belief that union contracts were too complicated. To research this premise, committee members met one-on-one with a number of key local industry professionals and found that clients often found rate information difficult to decipher and contracts too cumbersome — yet were also reluctant to contact the union directly in order to get help from professional union staff. The committee members decided one solution to this problem was to find a simple and easy way to provide this information to producers, agents and others. After discarding the idea of printing a pamphlet, they settled on creating an online website that would provide clear and simplified contract information and would appeal to the young producers and advertising agency staffers who live with smartphones in hand. Committee member Gallivan then wondered if a “widget” could be created to allow users to instantly calculate union rate estimates, and the calculator website concept was born. The local approved moving forward on the project.

Starting in the fall of 2011, the committee members met almost weekly for a year, working closely with a freelance Web designer-and-programmer team to create the prototype calculator website. Just as they neared completion, the SAG-AFTRA merger occurred, and not long after, the Twin Cities Local lost its local office and staff.

Determined not to let the website get lost in the shuffle, the committee continued to press for moving the project forward. By late 2013, the project got a green light to continue, with staff assistance from Director of Locals Administration Colleen Aho. In October 2014, the website was finalized, allowing the soft launch to begin. Since then, committee and other members have been spreading the word directly to their own local industry contacts — from veteran producers to those new to union contracts — and have already shared stories of producers ready to hire union talent after utilizing the numbers calculator and realizing how cost-effective hiring union can be.

Plans are in the works now for a formal rollout event for the Twin Cities production community, but meanwhile all local members are urged to share the sagaftranumbers.sagaftra.org URL with their own industry contacts. We are hopeful that by this time next year, the SAG-AFTRA Twin Cities Local’s numbers calculator will prove that it is a “game-changer.” Whatever the outcome, Twin Cities Local members owe a huge debt of gratitude to those persistent committee members who believed that they could change our world!

This item was originally featured in the February 2015 local newsletter.