One Year of SAG-AFTRA

by Brenda Ching, Executive Director

A year ago, the members of SAG and AFTRA voted to merge the two largest performing arts unions. Locals across the nation merged their offices too. In Hawaii it was simple. There was no AFTRA local so I became the new executive director for the new union. In this first year, I’m working with a 21-member board. The new board is headed by Co-Presidents Glenn Cannon and Rolf Burton. While things didn’t change that much, I’ve had to familiarize myself with new contracts, processes and new staff. During this first year, our combined Hawaii membership was more than 1,000. One of the first tasks the board had was to craft a new local constitution. In this first year, I worked with the committees on the local constitution, the newsletter, and SAG Awards. I coordinated our first SAG-AFTRA mixer with executives from CBS and the East West Players, and our first general membership meeting in the fall. The next steps in our new union are the upcoming national and local elections and, soon after, to get all of our contracts under SAG-AFTRA. It’s been a whirlwind first year.

This item was originally featured in the April 2013 local newsletter.