A Message from National Board Member Randal Berger

In mid-July, I attended the national board meeting in New York. One of the primary areas of focus was the TV/Theatrical Code negotiation results/report for national board discussion and eventual recommendation to membership for approval. That was the “biggie” at the meeting, and I will discuss it at the end of this communiqué, but first some general updates.

Communication Sub-Group

The Communication sub-group that I chair, which is a sub-group of the Committee of Locals, is continuing to research and suggest improvements in areas of communication. We have outlined and are refining areas of need. Once these are set, we will define communication tools to achieve those needs.

While we have input from other small and medium locals across the country, I would really like Twin Cities' input to include voices other than mine. If you are interested in participating in this group and/or can detail our needs from your perspective, please contact me at twincities@sagaftra.org.

Co-Ed Contract

Several members of the local board have been working extremely hard and avidly researching, both with members and the production community, refinements to the Corporate/Educational contract. We are one of only a few locals across the country that is working to re-engage with the production community to develop a local waiver to the Co-Ed contract that will address specific local needs while continuing to protect members and, more importantly, provide additional work in this contract area. We will be presenting our proposed waiver to the National Co-Ed Standing Committee for review and, if the waiver proposal is approved, will certainly inform the local membership. We will need the local membership to be involved, help get information out to producers and other members to help invigorate this contract locally.

Network Television Code Negotiations

Nationally, we are beginning the process of preparing for the Network Television Code contract negotiations. The Network Television Code is different from the recent TV/Theatrical Contracts in that it basically represents the other 20 or so hours of programming on TV, other than primetime. The National Network Television Code Committee was established and approved at the last national board meeting, and I have fortunately been selected to be involved on the committee representing small locals. I will be involved in the wages and working conditions review process as well as the actual Network Television Code negotiations. While I do not expect it to be as long as the TV/Theatrical negotiations, it will take several weeks of meetings in L.A. If you have experience in this area of contract work, please contact me with your insight and suggestions, as they will be vital to the process.

TV/Theatrical Negotiations

Lastly, members have overwhelmingly approved the TV/Theatrical Contracts. The major areas of accomplishment are:

•    We were able to unify the legacy SAG Television Agreement and legacy AFTRA Network Code Exhibit A into a single successor agreement. While from a member point of view this might seem a fait accompli from merger, producers were still bound by the old pre-merger agreements and had an obligation to negotiate successor agreements with SAG-AFTRA. Having several contracts for the same type of work is untenable for us as a union and achieving a single unified agreement was a very important goal during these negotiations.

•    We ensured wage increases of 8.5 percent, compounding to 8.7 percent over the three-year term.

•    We achieved increased contributions to the pension, health and retirement plans, as well as clarification as to which contributions go to which of the two plans. Remember, we still have two health and pension plans — the SAG plan and the AFTRA plan. They are legally separate organizations to the union and consequently were not merged when SAG and AFTRA merged. Continued investigation by both the SAG and AFTRA pension, retirement and health trustees into how to merge these two entities has been occurring.

Cheers,
Randal

This item was originally featured in the September 2014 local newsletter.