Monday, April 20, 2009

Will the Deal Get Done? SAG vs AMPTP

So I decided to take a full weekend off, and of course as I'm running errands Friday afternoon trying to pull together a full weekend of culinary wonder (I cook for my family, and I love doing it) I hear the news across the old AM 1070 in Los Angeles, that the AMPTP (producers) and SAG (actors) have finally reached an agreement. I stop my car, bounce over to KCRW, and I hear th same story. Sunday night, the National Board narrowly approved the new contract for recommendation for ratification by the membership. This means Ballots will go out to the members and they will FINALLY get a shot at voting on someting after 9 months of complete and utter Fuckery.

Oh, and this great deal SAG worked so hard to get? Looks almost exactly like the one on the table in January. Shocker!

So, I expected to go onto sites today and hear all kinds of Membership First Vitriol about the new deal, and blah blah blah. I am sure five 'hardliners' for membership first are 'protesting' their little hearts out somewhere in Hollywood today, wearing their 'I Heart Alan' t-shirts. I swear, I think the membership first people are more in love with creating drama and doing 'Uniony Stuff' like picketing than they are in love with making money and getting a shot to audition in more than 2 Feature Films this year. Back to the original point of the paragraph, I expected a lot of HATE today, and the reason there isn't a lot of hate, is because the ding bats in the 'moderate' group decided to let the Membership First yahoos deliver a 'CON Statement' to coincide with their 'PRO Statement' in favor of the contract.

However, some folks feel that despite a fight that still needs to be waged by the membership over the vote, the fatigue of this long... whatever the hell it was... (negotiation?) will result in a very narrow ratification.

The losses in revenue to SAG members personally is well documented. What isn't is the millions of dollars Alan Rosenberg and Doug Allen squandered in trying to control the message about the negotiations and de-rail the current negotiation task force's efforts to get a quick resolve done.
The damage to SAG financially and in spirt, is so vast, I doubt that SAG can ever recover from this botched contract negotiation. Hopefully this will all run it's course now, and end. Then we can all get back to work doing what we love.

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