Screen Extras Assail Offer That Would Cut Pay 25%

About 100 members of the Screen Extras Guild met in North Hollywood Park Sunday to voice disapproval of a contract offered to it last week.

The proposed one-year contract, union members said, would create a two-tier wage system--based on a six- and eight-hour workday--and pay members 25% less than they are now earning for an eight-hour day. Film and television producers also would be allowed to hire fewer union extras, a provision that members say is intended to break the 6,600-member guild.

Representatives of the Alliance of Motion Picture and TV Producers, the organization that has been negotiating with the Screen Extras Guild since the SEG contract expired in January, and SEG executives who approve of the new contract could not be reached for comment.

Members of the guild will be mailed ballots this week. The new contract, if ratified, would take effect after Nov. 17, said Dan Cotter, a member of the guild’s executive board.

The board voted 18 to 4 last week to submit the offer for members’ approval, Cotter said.

Under the proposal, as described at the meeting Sunday, extras would be paid $54 for a six-hour day and $68 for an eight-hour day. Union extras, who serve as faces in the crowd in films and television shows, are paid an eight-hour wage of $91 under the old three-year pact, which producers have continued to honor during the negotiations.

The pact required that the first 175 extras hired for a feature film be union members. It also required the first 75 extras on an hourlong TV show to be members and the first 40 on a 30-minute show be members.

The new agreement would cut those numbers to 40 for feature films and 30 for all television shows, Cotter said.

“It’s going to throw all our people out of work because they can pay people $35 a day,” Cotter said.

Television producer David Gerber said wage cuts for extras would be a step toward making Hollywood competitive with other cities in the United States and Canada, where wages of extras and other costs are lower.

“The business of making films is leaving this town by hundreds of millions of dollars, and I believe all the unions at the moment are trying to do something about this by keeping the business here,” said Gerber, who is president of MGM / UA Television, a member of the Alliance of Motion Picture and TV Producers.

A two-hour television feature can save as much as $40,000 on extras by filming out of town, Gerber said.

Among the efforts planned at the Sunday meeting was a candlelight vigil Wednesday in front of the union’s Hollywood offices.

Cotter said that if the contract is not ratified, a strike is not likely and, he added, would probably not be successful, given the number of non-union extras available.