No Residuals for Striking Actors

Re “Why We Actors Are Staging a Strike,” Commentary, Sept. 10: The examples cited by William Daniels to justify actors’ residuals are weak comparisons. Composers of words or music are creating permanent intellectual works that can be interpreted by others for as long as the work remains in existence. If actors like Daniels or others who portray everything from “Mr. Whipple” to “Captain Kirk” prove to be actors whom the public desires to see on a consistent basis, then let them trade on what the market will bear and negotiate residual or higher-paying contracts.

The majority of actors do journeyman work, much like the electricians, prop men, caterers, sound technicians, etc., who collectively serve to interpret those works albeit through different actions. They only get paid once for their labors. So should the majority of actors.

J.M. SCHWARTZ

Santa Clarita

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I wonder which part of “the rest of the labor movement has stood shoulder to shoulder with working actors.” Certainly not the tens of thousands of union craftspeople who work on commercials as daily hires, who have had no work in five months and are close to losing their houses because of the strike, a strike in which they had no say.

Certainly not the union members working in the film labs and the production houses and post-production industries who are suffering the same fate. And certainly not the many people and companies involved in jobs supplying meals, props, cars, locations stages and the thousand and one things that ripple through the economy from making commercials.

Mr. Daniels, could you name just one craft union whose strike or organizational picketing SAG has honored in the last three or four decades? Who, exactly, is standing shoulder to shoulder with you from the labor movement?

BOB KERTESZ

Los Angeles