From the Corner Office

by Randy Himes
Assistant National Executive Director, Sound Recordings/Nashville Executive Director

To all the members of SAG-AFTRA Nashville, congratulations and welcome home to the entertainment industry’s largest and most influential union! You are now over 165,000 members strong!

I remember when Nashville achieved the goal of 100 Nashville SAG members and was granted Branch status in 1980. AFTRA national agreed to allow its Locals to administer SAG contracts for a negotiated contract fee. This was more cost-efficient for both unions. SAG didn’t have to incur startup fees for separate office operations, and AFTRA received much-needed administrative monies for its local operations.

As I recall, Bob Sanders was the first local SAG president. The SAG Nashville Branch Council and the AFTRA Nashville Board met as one entity from day one. In the 23 years the SAG Branch was administered by the AFTRA Local, there was never a line of demarcation between the issues and concerns of singers, actors, announcers and others. We never issued a franchise to a local talent agent for one union without requiring the agent to apply and be franchised to the other.

When signing a producer to a contract, film was SAG, videotape was AFTRA. The SAG Nashville Branch grew exponentially, as did the AFTRA Nashville Local.

The first significant indicator of production change in our industry was when the UCLA film school stopped offering courses in film production, and instead offered courses in digital production. AFTRA and SAG members began to realize that whenever one union signed more producers to a particular area, there were corresponding problem issues due to lack of dues dollars and health and retirement/pension and health contributions. Each union worked to organize the same jurisdictions and the ebb and flow of member frustration grew as members watched their dues be spent to essentially fight the other union, as opposed to organizing work for members under a merged or unified union.

In 2003, SAG moved to streamline office operations and pulled member administrative services out of Nashville to the SAG South Region office based in Florida. SAG South Region Director Leslie Krensky and her staff stepped in and provided a seamless transition of services to the SAG Nashville membership. I have thoroughly enjoyed working with Leslie, and the move back to the Nashville office is an easy transition. We are working to see that the member programs and initiatives put in place by the South Region office since 2003 continue for all members.

Pound for pound, Nashville is one of the strongest Locals in the new union. We are rich, with many high-profile royalty artists signed to major and independent labels. We are home to the top session singers in the country (based on the number of SAG-AFTRA sessions worked each year). We are home to a solid and growing actor talent pool that works on a local/national basis. Nashville members continue to influence work and decisions nationally.

We have been blessed with local member leaders who have helped shepherd Nashville through all these interesting years. Those leaders are too numerous to individually mention here, but your Board of Directors serves without compensation and continually gives their valuable personal time to meet every month in an effort to improve your life through increased job opportunities and related income and health and retirement benefits. Nashville has been blessed with great leaders who kept the interests of the members in mind with every decision that was made.

Special thanks to past presidents and local board members of both unions, but particularly those who served during the transitional years. Thank you to current SAG-AFTRA Co-President Mike Montgomery for his long-term service, as not only the Branch president since 2003, but for his service on the AFTRA Local Board.

Thank you as well to Jim Ferguson, who has served in leadership, officer, convention delegate and sound code negotiation chair positions since 1986! Congrats to Jim for being appointed as the first SAG-AFTRA national sound recording vice president. And last, but certainly not least, thank you to Cece DuBois, who has unselfishly and tirelessly served as president and National Board member for SAG, and has also served as our AFTRA president and National Board member for 20 years!

We have already experienced some of the ways this merger has had a dramatic and positive influence on the members of SAG-AFTRA. One recent example was the decision of our new National Board to authorize a “Do Not Work” order for music videos, which resulted in achieving successful negotiations of the first industrywide music video agreement with the major record labels (UMG, SonyBMG, Warner, EMI and Disney).

I look forward to continuing our work on behalf of all SAG-AFTRA members in Nashville and across the country. The best is yet to come.