A Message from the National Board Representative

Hello My Union Friends,

I have recently returned from a national board meeting in L.A. I can tell you that our union is in great shape. We are saving money with our annual budgets, our pension plans are in the green zone (which is the highest rating you can give the plans), residual checks are being sent to members in under 30 days, and you can now combine earnings from SAG and AFTRA jobs to help you qualify for health benefits.

In case you haven’t seen it, your union now has a new logo. There was a lot of debate over this new logo. I like this logo and I voted for it. However, I do not love it. But I think over time it will evolve into something that we can all be proud of. All logos change over time and ours will too. The national board has been debating this new design for a long time. I felt it was time to move forward. You are never going to get everyone in the boardroom to agree on something like this, but I think having “analysis paralysis” doesn’t do the members much good. Like I said, this is a good beginning.

On a local level, there is one SAG-AFTRA movie shooting in town: Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice. I wish I could say there were more, but you all know what happened to our film incentive. The three hottest locations to film in are New Orleans, Canada and L.A., in that order. It was always my hope that Michigan would have been in that No. 1 spot.

On a more positive note, I want to thank all the members who came to our annual meeting at Lawrence Tech. It was a good meeting with a great workshop on marketing yourself on social media. In today’s age of technology, we all need to be better at this skill. I didn’t realize how much this could help or hurt an actor. This is something I will definitely try to do better.

That does it for now. Until next time, see you on set.

Peter Tocco
National Board Representative

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