Hollywood’s 2 Major Actors Unions Consider Merging

Alarmed by corporate consolidation in the entertainment industry, Hollywood’s actors unions are deciding whether to join together to strengthen their hand in future negotiations.

Leaders of the Screen Actors Guild and its sometime partner, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, are pushing to join the two into a giant union representing 123,000 performers and broadcasters.

To bargain effectively with the gargantuan likes of Walt Disney Co. and Sony Corp., whose reach covers film, television and music, performers must unite in one union, supporters of the idea say.

Foes worry, however, that the interests of one type of performer--film actors, for example--would conflict with the interests of others, such as soap opera stars. The two unions together would be larger but less effective, they contend.

With labor peace in Southern California’s most visible industry hanging in the balance, members have until Jan. 25 to return their ballots. The debate is presenting in stark relief the divisions embedded in the entertainment business: film versus videotape, Los Angeles-based versus out-of-town performers, striving young actors versus silver screen veterans.

“This is a major move and I don’t think we’re ready to make it,” said Oscar winner Martin Landau, one of about 40,000 performers who keep memberships in both unions.

Landau and other actors involved in the “Save SAG” effort say the new union would be too broad to serve the interests of its disparate members, who would include actors, recording artists, sportscasters and others. Although actors fight for contracts providing adequate turnaround time between breaks in filming and penalties for late delivery of meals on the set, Landau said, “that doesn’t add up to a hill of beans for a weatherman.”

But supporters, including some actors who work predominantly in AFTRA-covered videotaped television programming, contend the new organization would find more strength in numbers.

“In future negotiations, you need a strong union,” said “The Young & the Restless” star Eric Braeden. “Otherwise, [employers] will play one against the other.”

For years, the two unions have complained when one undercut the other, including on contracts for work on Fox sitcoms. Their split dates back to, and is rooted in, the advent of the television picture tube.

In 1933, when actors such as Boris Karloff had to skulk down alleys and dodge studio detectives so their fledgling union could meet in secrecy, SAG had only to concern itself with the film industry. AFTRA’s founders in 1937 worried primarily about radio (it was originally known as the American Federation of Radio Artists) and considered themselves the union of broadcast journalists.

Can Disparate Memberships Unite?

Since the emergence of television, however, the two have crossed swords, divvying up the turf into prime time, daytime, and filmed and taped shows. Only after the last actors’ strike in 1980 did the two agree to jointly negotiate contracts for prime-time production, commercials and nonbroadcast work such as training films.

Still, the two unions regularly diverge, splitting on at least two issues in the last year alone. SAG successfully lobbied for approval of a state law outlawing stalking by paparazzi. AFTRA, which represents television journalists, declined to endorse the bill.

And as part of an international convention on intellectual property, the two unions were divided over whether actors’ performances should be covered in an international treaty on digital technology. AFTRA had accepted the deal, after securing only recording artists’ work, and blasted SAG for dragging out the proceedings.

While SAG’s Los Angeles board members decline to recommend the merger, AFTRA’s rank-and-file appear to back it.

“When you leave L.A., you leave a company town, and people will get away with whatever they can, nonunion,” said Charles “Stoney” Richards, program director of country music station WDSY-FM in Pittsburgh, Pa. “The way the industry is changing, the merger helps the working stiffs.”

The marriage would bring together SAG’s 91,000 performers with AFTRA’s 72,000. But whether the varied membership of the new organization could unite in a strike is an open question.

Even if the unions join, their members will perform under different contracts, meaning soap opera stars could picket a network in one dispute while prime-time actors cross the picket lines to fulfill their own contract with the same network.

Although management has remained mostly silent in the merger campaign, studio and network sources said they believe a larger union could flex more muscle if it negotiated broader contracts that would end at the same time, allowing it to raise the specter of industrywide strikes.

That could be difficult.

“They’re not idiots,” former SAG President Charlton Heston said of the studios. “They’re not going to let all the contracts run out at the same time.”

Although the industry has enjoyed relative labor peace in recent years, even mild tensions between performers and producers can wreak havoc with schedules. Because of the lead time required to assemble financing and schedule filming, studios have been known to move up release dates or put projects on hold when contract talks start to sour.

Even if doubts fester over how much clout actors would gain by joining, supporters say there is no question what would happen if they remain apart.

At a time when producers are taking their projects to Canada and Australia to take advantage of exchange rates and tax credits, a decision not to merge would touch off clashes over work on individual films and programs, with each union vying separately for contracts, backers say. What’s more, they contend the unions are destined to butt heads competing for control of work on newer media such as CD-ROMs and digital television.

And while union die-hards are hauling out marquee stars to spar over the merger in the headlines, the deal is likely to have a far greater impact on lesser-known workaday performers who count on those contracts. An estimated 80% of SAG’s members make less than $10,000 a year from acting, making them far more dependent on the union’s ability to win livable wages and benefits than stars who rake in $20 million per movie.

To join SAG, a performer must have played a speaking role in a union-contracted production. Some SAG members object to a joint union because it would force them to compete for work with AFTRA performers who didn’t have to meet such eligibility requirements.

“They are potentially taking an audition slot away from somebody who’s a trained actor,” said Brady Michaels, an actor and stuntman appearing in a Chevy truck commercial, who voted no. “If the gates open, [inexperienced actors] will say, ‘I might as well try to be a movie star.’ ”

(Actors who apply to join the merged union would have to complete three days of work as an extra on a union-covered production.)

Despite the prospect of internal battles, proponents of the merger believe it would be more efficient to operate as one union.

Although SAG President Richard Masur said he doesn’t expect layoffs among the combined staff of about 700, he said the organization would reap savings eventually by eliminating duplication of services, including some legal work. The union would start with a $5.9-million budget deficit, and it is not projected to cut total expenses until 2002.

New Dues Called Unfairly Harsh

SAG’s annual dues are $85, plus 1.5% of earnings over $5,000 up to $150,000. The new structure would raise dues to $195, plus 1.3% of earnings over $2,000 up to $100,000. Critics say that system is unfairly harsh to the poorest performers, and note the merger plan delays the effects of the new dues structure on broadcasters who make $400,000 a year or more.

The unions’ health-care plans and pension funds, which together hold about $3.4 billion in assets, would remain separate entities. Bringing them together might allow more members to qualify for benefits, but trustees of both plans have decided there are too many legal and accounting obstacles to merge them.

While joining the pension and health plans had been an objective of earlier merger outlines, supporters said the plan now before members would be the closest compromise.

“Yes, we may have some internal conflict,” Masur said of the proposed new union. “But at least we won’t be trying to beat each other over the head while our employers stand on the sidelines, laughing.”