She had her negotiating act together

Roberta Reardon heads the second-largest union of TV actors in the country. But you won’t find her name in the credit listings on the IMDb website. The self-described blue-collar actress has earned a living doing mostly commercials, voice-overs and industrial videos.

Her time in the public spotlight has come not from acting but as president of Hollywood’s 70,000-member American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. AFTRA, whose members also include radio announcers and recording artists, has long labored in the shadow of the bigger and more powerful Screen Actors Guild.

Reardon’s important role in the negotiations came to light last week when the union negotiated a new three-year prime-time TV contract with the studios.

Although Reardon and her colleagues were not able to get an increase in residuals paid to actors from the sale of DVDs -- a long-sought goal -- they did nonetheless win higher pay for so-called middle-class actors -- those earning an average of $52,000.

More noteworthy, AFTRA reached a key compromise over the charged issue of how actors’ images are exploited on the Internet. That was one of the issues that caused studios to break off earlier talks with SAG that resumed five days ago.

Reardon is credited with keeping the AFTRA talks alive when they threatened to derail and helping to craft a tentative contract that has its detractors among some hard-core members but also achieved gains that SAG could not a few weeks earlier. SAG leaders were plain about their worries: They thought AFTRA would cut a raw deal.

“She said the best way we can prove that people are wrong about us is to give them the best contract we can get,” said actress Tess Harper, a member of the federation’s negotiating committee who is also a former board member of SAG.

Reardon, who lives in New York and has been on the AFTRA national board for nearly a decade, was elected president last July after the board tapped her to complete the remainder of the term of her friend John Connolly, the veteran union leader who resigned to head Actors Equity Assn., which represents stage actors and stage managers.

It was a serendipitous rise for an actress whose stage and screen career was largely limited to the likes of New Jersey regional theater and a few minor roles in soaps such as “Another World,” in which she played a nurse. She later established a busy vocation doing training videos for industrial clients such as American Express Co. and commercials for the likes of Campbell’s Soup and Kmart. “I did a lot of mommies,” she explained.

“I’m very aware that people take swipes at my lack of credits,” said Reardon, 59. “But I think I understand the concerns of our members who are working actors and not stars.”

Not everyone agrees.

Soon after she was elected, Reardon found herself in a tussle with SAG’s hard-charging executive director, Doug Allen, who blasted AFTRA’s cable-TV contracts as inferior and pushed to change the terms of the union’s joint bargaining pact. Reardon shot back, accusing Allen of Karl Rove-like tactics and defending the federation’s approach, which she contended has expanded union jobs.

The fight reached a breaking point earlier this year when Reardon accused SAG of “a relentless campaign of disinformation and disparagement” in attempting to wrest jurisdiction of “The Bold and the Beautiful” from AFTRA. SAG denied anything of the sort, but the alleged overture nonetheless triggered an acrimonious end to the 27-year bargaining partnership.

Reardon defended the action: “How can you sit and negotiate with a partner who doesn’t respect you, who doesn’t treat you honestly and was making a run at one of your shows?”

Against such a backdrop, some feared AFTRA would capitulate on key issues, including clips.

Instead, AFTRA negotiators held fast, balking at the studios’ initial demands that they be allowed to use nonpromotional clips of film and TV shows on the Internet without the consent of actors. Actors have had that consent right since 1960.

When the issue threatened to derail talks after the first week of negotiations, Reardon and Executive Director Kim Roberts Hedgpeth appealed directly to Walt Disney Co. Chief Executive Robert Iger and Fox President Peter Chernin to make their case.

The two media executives had played a pivotal role in crafting a deal that settled the 100-day writers strike only a few months earlier.

“They said, ‘We don’t understand why this is such a big deal,’ ” Reardon said. “We assured them that we understood that the industry is going through massive changes, but we explained why this was an important issue to actors and that we may have to walk away from the table if we can’t find a way to address this.”

To drive home the point, Reardon tapped a group of actors, including “Grey’s Anatomy” star Kate Burton, daughter of late actor Richard Burton, to speak directly to studio negotiators and share their own experiences and concerns about how clips of their work are used.

That paved the way for an eventual compromise.

Matt Kimbrough, chairman of AFTRA’s 31-member negotiating committee, credits Reardon for keeping the talks alive during crucial moments.

Just hours before the deal was clinched, a dispute erupted over a change in contract language that seemed to weaken the actors’ right of consent over the use of clips. Some committee members were so upset that they threatened to walk out until Reardon calmed them down.

“People were getting all torqued up,” Kimbrough said, “but she reminded everyone of what was at stake. She said just be patient and trust your negotiators. She was like a warm but very firm mother who says, ‘Kids, take a deep breath.’ ”

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richard.verrier@latimes.com

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In the spotlight

Who: Roberta Reardon

Age: 59

Job: Actress

Title: National President of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists

Residence: New York

Education: B.A. in theater from the University of Wyoming; attended the New York State AFL-CIO/Cornell University Union Leadership Institute

Family: Married to actor Walter Cline

Favorite role: Martha in a theater workshop production of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”

Most atypical narration: A video counseling patients on coping with Lou Gehrig’s disease

Hobby: Cooking