His union divided cannot stand

IT’S no secret that Alan Rosenberg, the new president of the Screen Actors Guild, is an outspoken Hollywood liberal who started questioning authority in the 1960s and hasn’t stopped since. So I wasn’t surprised to hear him explain that his longtime hero is Abraham Lincoln, whom he admired as a man whose “fierce commitment to fairness” propelled him to the U.S. presidency.

Rosenberg cracked a sheepish grin. “Of course, if I’d been alive back then, I’d have been an abolitionist, so I would’ve thought he didn’t go far enough. I’d probably have said, ‘Abe, you’re too much of a moderate.’ ”

Until now, the 54-year-old actor has been best known for roles on such shows as “The Guardian,” in which he played the head of a children’s legal services agency who was just as fiercely idealistic as Rosenberg is in real life. But now Rosenberg is running what is the largest -- not to mention the most contentious -- union in Hollywood. And judging from the tough talk I heard in his office the other day, we could be in for a turbulent new era of union activity.

“We’re dealing with corporations who see us as obstacles to what is their sole goal: maximizing their profits,” he told me Thursday, wearing a presidential-casual wardrobe of jeans, a rumpled shirt and loafers with no socks. “If they had their way, they’d love to do away with residuals altogether. Until now, the studios have looked at how fractured we are as a union and haven’t taken us very seriously. So my philosophy is that we have to take an adversarial position and stand strong and never leave the negotiating table until we make progress and prevail.”

As anyone who has seen the various Hollywood unions take it on the chin in recent labor negotiations might say: easier said than done. But SAG isn’t the only union making waves. The Writers Guild of America West recently elected new leadership that promised a more aggressive approach to organizing efforts and fired Executive Director John McLean, who had been viewed as too accommodating to the studios.

One of the traditional weaknesses of Hollywood unions has been their inability to band together in pursuit of common goals. It isn’t only that the unions have been wracked by internal strife, something of a constant at the WGA, which saw two presidents resign under pressure within three months last year. But the unions have acted more like jealous rivals than natural allies. Instead of making common cause with the Directors Guild of America on key issues such as DVD revenue, the WGA engaged in a futile battle with the DGA over possessory credits, which veteran screenwriter Larry Gross likened to “two bald men fighting over a comb.”

Time and again, the unions have been trounced by the studios, who are not just more powerful but also more disciplined and united. Instead of pushing to have their contracts expire simultaneously, which could provide added negotiating clout, the unions have pursued independent strategies, rarely seeing past their specific economic interests. Rosenberg says this lack of unity has to change. In fact, when we finished our interview, he headed off to lunch with Patric Verrone, the newly elected president of the Writers Guild.

“If we could present a united front with the WGA and the DGA,” he says, “we’d be a lot stronger.”

BUT first Rosenberg has to heal the wounds in his own union. SAG has been split into warring factions for years, often accentuated by the huge disparities among its 120,000 members. It represents stars, supporting players and unknowns. Obviously Brad Pitt’s priorities are completely different from the vast majority of the union, which is often, as the euphemism goes, between jobs. “Sometimes I think the union exists to protect us from ourselves,” says Rosenberg. “Too often, actors’ first allegiance is to the producer or agent who gave them their first job instead of to the union that will provide a safety net of healthcare benefits and residuals long after your best days as an actor are over.”

While out touting his campaign proposals, Rosenberg was startled to hear from a Denver-based union executive that he didn’t see DVD residuals as a particularly high priority issue. “As a voice actor [who doesn’t receive residuals], he wasn’t willing to stand up strongly for the residual issue. I have to convince people like him that if we got an increase in the pathetic amount of residuals [the rest of us] now receive, it would help fund better healthcare and other benefits that everyone cares about.”

Rosenberg seems to realize that he has to woo his guild’s high-profile actors before he can pursue a more aggressive approach with the studios. During SAG’s last negotiation, the union appeared to defer to its working actors, with then President Melissa Gilbert saying, in the wake of a bitter 2000 strike against advertisers, that she was opposed to another work stoppage that would “recklessly gamble with the careers and lives of our working members.”

Rosenberg is determined to persuade SAG’s upper echelon that it needs the union as much as any day player. “We have to show them how they are getting screwed just as much as anybody on DVD residuals. But I also want to celebrate when a star does something great, whether it’s Harry Connick Jr. being one of the first people in New Orleans helping people in need or Hank Azaria being a big force behind ‘Huff’ deciding to shoot in America, not in Canada.”

SAG bears a strong resemblance to the Major League Baseball Players Assn., both unions representing highly paid marquee entertainers who are the key drawing cards in their respective businesses. But while the baseball player’s union has won unprecedented salaries and benefits, SAG has come away from recent negotiations largely empty-handed. Because so much of the industry’s economic well-being is based on DVD income, the studios have refused to budge on that front, leaving actors with a pittance of the huge home-video profits studios have swallowed up over the last decade.

Rosenberg points to the experience of his wife, “CSI” star Marg Helgenberger. After the studio takes 80% of the DVD revenues off the table, Helgenberger and the rest of the “CSI” cast split 4.5% of the remaining 20% of revenue. (After the first million-dollars’ worth of DVD sales, they get a slightly better deal.) Actors do worse in new growth areas. Under SAG’s video game agreement, even a star such as Al Pacino won’t receive any profits from the use of his voice or likeness in the new “Scarface” video game unless he’s reached an individual deal with the game’s producers.

Why do baseball players have a more effective union? Rosenberg says they have several key advantages being laborers with highly defined skills and operating in a business with full employment. But ballplayers have a unity and resoluteness of purpose that’s sorely missing from Hollywood unions. SAG Executive Director Greg Hessinger recently met with Donald Fehr, his counterpart at the players association, to better grasp the reasons for their success. But SAG has a long way to go. As Rosenberg puts it: “It’s a problem. We think of ourselves as artists, but our employers see us as labor, often unskilled labor.”

WHEN Rosenberg talks about his guild, he often refers back to his days as a ‘60s activist, an experience that formed many of his core beliefs. His older brother, the film producer Mark Rosenberg, who died of a heart attack in 1992, was a bigger-than-life figure in Hollywood political circles, having the distinction of being the only president of Warner Bros. Films to have been a member of the Black Panther Party.

Rosenberg recalls, as a 10-year-old, having his brother teach him about the value of free speech after perusing a Playboy interview with American Nazi Party leader George Lincoln Rockwell. “In their family, there was always a dynamic that made the boys identify with the underdog,” says producer Paula Weinstein, who was married to Mark. “Their father was a gentle, honorable man who gave them a real passion to fight for what they believed in.”

After directing an episode of “The Guardian” in which his character was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease, Rosenberg became the spokesman for fundraising efforts to battle the disease. Over the years he has also been involved in a host of liberal political causes. “I just can’t shut up about injustice,” he says. “I guess I’m the fly in the ointment. I’ve always felt strongly about politics and, if anything, I’ve gotten more passionate as I’ve gotten older.”

Anyone who thinks actors should keep their mouths shut about politics will get an earful from Rosenberg. “We’re Americans, and if we don’t speak out, who will?” he says. “If anyone puts a microphone in front of my face and asks about the war in Iraq, it’s my obligation to speak out and say we’re in deep trouble. I have more faith in what an actor has to say, if they’re well informed, than any politician.”

People can joke that SAG is now the only union with a foreign policy, but if Rosenberg manages to unite his guild, no one will be laughing the next time SAG comes to the negotiating table. As he put it: “My experience in the ‘60s tells me people can accomplish amazing things when they’re bound together by a just cause.”