President's Report

by Barbara Grant

I am going to write this report on the possible merger of Screen Actors Guild and American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, which is the most important issue before us this year. I was in the Cagney Room in Hollywood as our national president presided over the distribution of information to the SAG National Board members. I listened carefully to all of the questions and concerns raised by these involved women and men, and I took pride in the fact that our National Board member, Art Lynch, voted with the more than 87 percent of the board to recommend ratification to SAG membership.

What I am now going to do is give you my opinion. I am going to vote yes on the merger and I hope the rest of the Nevada Branch members do the same. We are in a very similar situation as the great actors of the past were at the founding of our unions during the Great Depression. As then, we are finding ourselves more and more at the mercy of corporate overseers. Entertainment corporate profits are on the rise, even as they try to shoot more and more production at the non-union rate or pit us against one another.

I just read in the Hollywood Reporter that for the third year in a row the vast majority of television pilots will be under AFTRA contracts. For this reason alone, I will vote for the merger in the hope that P&H will be able to merge and we are better able to obtain the minimums required to vest in our pensions and get health care. But this is not the best reason to join together. The best reason is the collective voice of collective bargaining. The AMPTP is not made up of a bunch of dummies. They can clearly see the value to their corporations of keeping us divided and pitting us against one another. This must stop, and we performers must have a single voice in negotiating our contracts so we never have to undergo what we did a few years ago. If not, then I truly fear that we will grow weaker as the producers get stronger, and we once again will be totally at their mercy — and by the way, they don’t have any mercy.

This is our moment in the sun to lead our unions into the future as our founders in SAG and AFTRA did in the 1930s. We cannot know every detail of our new constitution any more than we can know every little detail under our current constitution, but I do know that the boards of both unions are honest and conscientious people who have hired the best staff possible to get the best possible contracts, and making decent dollars for our work is the most important issue anyway. The national boards have put safeguards into the merger to protect us now and in the future, and I offer my deep and abiding thanks for all of the work that went into the merger agreement.

I strongly and unequivocally urge every Nevada Branch member to vote yes for ratification and a stronger union.

This item was originally featured in the June 2012 local newsletter.