President's Report

Aloha Brothers and Sisters:

The big news was the SAG-AFTRA 2015 National Convention in L.A. Oct. 1-4, with its theme of Educate, Engage, Empower. Our Hawaii delegation included Becky Maltby, Lisa Romano, Jean Simon, myself and Scott Rogers, our National Board member. Local Executive Director Brenda Ching also attended staff meetings.

Among many memorable events was David White’s powerful national executive director’s report, exhorting us to develop new muscles to meet the challenges of the brave new world of emerging and future technologies.

The union’s campaign to organize performers working in commercials for Droga5, a digital advertising agency, continues apace. Sign the petition and spread the word on social media.  

As a member of the Local Presidents Forum consisting of presidents from all 25 locals including L.A. and New York, I learned of exciting new initiatives for our consideration, such as Nashville’s Student Film Contest.

In addition to national officers’ elections, Hawaii is represented on 13 national committees, including Asian Pacific American, Media, Background, Committee of Locals, Conservatory, Dancers, Disciplinary Review, Fi-Core, Member Review, Native Americans, Organizing, Professional Representatives, SAGindie, and Stunt & Safety. 

On the topic of constitutional amendments, the convention approved Amendment 2015-CA-02: Reduce “Good Standing” Eligibility Requirement to Six Months for Most Offices. It required automatic amendment for local officer and board member eligibility provisions in our local constitution. It provided that we could elect to retain the existing 12-month good-standing eligibility requirement. Your board declined to do so, so the liberalized “good standing” applies here in Hawaii.

Locally, we had a well-attended annual membership meeting Aug. 31, which featured an inspiring talk by guest speaker Georja Skinner, chief officer, Creative Industries Division, state of Hawaii, Department Of Business, Economic Development & Tourism, about the many exciting initiatives in which her office is engaged. 

Our members have been active doing table reads at UH’s Academy of Creative Media, volunteering for the Hawaii Public Radio semi-annual fundraiser and speaking at public school career days. We even managed to have another golf outing.

At our Nov. 11 membership mixer, we were honored with special guests from the national office, and plans are afoot to have a SAG Awards Viewing Party on Jan. 30, again at Honey’s.

Future projects being discussed include the Student Film Contest, the Commercials Organizing and Recapture Initiative, and fashioning a better method by which our members are exposed to casting directors and producers.

These are exciting times nationally and locally for our union. I urge you to stay involved to assist in the important work that remains ahead.

In solidarity,

David C. Farmer
SAG-AFTRA Hawaii Local President

This item was originally featured in the December 2015 local newsletter.