WRITERS ARE STAYING AWAY FROM SAG IN DROVES

[Bill Bartram]

I'm a SAG, AFTRA, and Equity member, earning my living as an actor in Hollywood for 25 years.

While WGA had admirable unity & discipline last year, the current SAG leadership is in bloody disarray...what's new? And Monday 6/9/08 they want WGA pickets to prop up a corrupt SAG regime.

SAG Exec Doug Allen, crossed his own NFL picket line in Buffalo in 1974, worked 27 years rubber-stamping Gene Upshaw's autocracy at the NFLPA, then took the SAG job after SAG Board "membershipfirsters" had popped a cap into three successive SAG Execs until they found their head-banger. What's Doug Allen's union strategy? First attack the agents (whom SAG has no current franchise agreement with,) then when members said no to that, attack AFTRA for SAG's own lack of organizing of acting work.

Monday June 9's 2008 SAG "Solidarity" rally is no more than a cover-your-ass tactic to bash its sister union AFTRA.

Why did AFTRA negotiate separately with the AMPTP? For 18 months current SAG leadership has been engaged in illegal contract-raiding, jurisdictional shennanigans, spending members' dues money to trash AFTRA contracts, and fomenting wreckless union-bashing instead of negotiation.

AFTRA contracts are all democratically ratified and worked by actors who belong to both SAG and AFTRA for work in prime-time, cable, radio, interactive, animation, internet, etc. -- the same worker pool with membership in both performers' unions in order to work all the contracts.

Come Monday, as Harry Cohn used to say, "Keep typing!" Don't bother to support a failing, flailing regime of SAG leaders who DO NOT have SAG nor AFTRA members' interests at heart.

[Gollysunshine]

Even Variety who hasn't been friendly to the WGA or SAG during these negotiations reported 500 people... Nikki Finke said 550... And I KNOW there were more than 150 people there. The sidewalk was crowded. I'm sure there were staff people there, but there were a lot of actors and writers that I recognized or knew personally. I know little about the internal SAG/AFTRA politics and am trying to learn, so normally I'd welcome and believe the comments you offer here. But when you report deliberate distortions of the numbers like this on top of your title misrepresentation and your pretense that writers don't support SAG because they know the leadership is wrong, then I have to take anything you say about the politics with a grain of salt. I'm glad to hear you weren't casting aspirations on Rosenberg, obviously I don't know the anonymous person you are referring to.

nom de guerre ... an assumed name when fighting... how perfect.

[Bill Bartram]

Gollysunshine,
Employees in both the SAG & AFTRA offices looking down on the crowd from the 7th & 9th floors and KNBC-TV staff present at the demonstration estimated the crowd actually marching to have been approximately 150.

Take a closer gander at Nikki's stuff. She's so starstruck by acting celebs like Justine Bateman, Marg & Alan, that in Finke's eyes 150 is 1,000,000.

[Gollysunshine]

Bill Bartram, (Mr. nom de guerre ... an assumed name when fighting):

So that I guess answers my curiosity as to who you are... most likely an AFTRA staffer looking down on the plaza. The crowd fluctuated, depending on the time... what did you people do, look down at 10 am and count the people who were there on time? Or perhaps look down after 12 noon when a lot of people had gone home. I arrived about 10:20 and I couldn't move through the crowd -- I have pictures of people packed like sardines, but my little camera isn't capable of taking the entire area and I'm sure you'd try to claim that the whole 150 people jammed in front of my camera just to make it look bigger. From the way I was hemmed in during the speeches, I believe the 500 as reported. Perhaps you need to visit the eye doctor and tell him how you can't see very well from upper floors. I even had trouble finding a parking space because all the spaces were filled.

I figured that you would make a slur against Nikki Finke so that's why I mentioned Variety. Here's the quote from yesterday's Variety:

"Chants of "Vote no!" came from the raucous crowd of about 500 during short speeches by Rosenberg, Keith Carradine, SAG national exec director Doug Allen, WGA West president Patric Verrone and WGA West exec director David Young. There were also repeated boos and catcalls when AFTRA was mentioned."

Here's the link for you to read:

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117987130.html?categoryid=13&...

You know that if there had been only a 150 people there and if they had been mostly staffers, Variety would be the first to gleefully post that. After all, look at how they claim there were boos and hisses every time AFTRA was mentioned. That wasn't what I heard -- I heard boos and hisses whenever the CONTRACT that AFTRA negotiated and expected to be ratified was mentioned. It's not the same thing. It's expressing displeasure over the contract, not the union itself. So if Variety is so gleeful to foster the split between the two unions (which just breaks my heart), you know they would NOT have pumped the numbers up and would not have reported 500 if there weren't close to that.

I'm not interested in keeping up with a running argument with you -- I've got better things to do with my time. But I felt for the sakes of those who couldn't be there, I needed to correct your deliberate misinformation, especially when I don't believe your headline was meant to be 'too snarky' but was a deliberate attempt to have people think that SAG leadership was so bad that even WGA writers wouldn't support them.

[Stuart Creque]

How about this?

East Coast SAG brass: 'We were lied to'
Claim they were misled abou...

June 10, 2008, 11:30 PM

East Coast members of SAG's national leadership board are fuming over what they say were lies told by union president Alan Rosenberg and national executive director Doug Allen about the nature of Monday's rally.

The rally at guild headquarters -- which drew hundreds of SAG and WGA members as well as dual cardholders who also are members of AFTRA -- included AFTRA bashing and calls for AFTRA members to vote down the recently brokered primetime/TV contract with the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers.

A member of SAG's national executive committee who attended a meeting Friday said Allen and Rosenberg had said that the rally would be pro-SAG and nothing more.

"We were told this would be a pro rally for the (SAG) negotiating team," the member said. "Anything that was remotely anti-AFTRA, we were told by Alan Rosenberg and the national executive director, wouldn't happen. We were lied to by both of them."

A source close to negotiations said the East Coast contingency's allegations are inaccurate.

Friday's meeting took place while SAG was awaiting AFTRA's response to a request to delay its ratification vote, the source said, adding that it was made "very clear" that the rally was to support the negotiations. It also was discussed that if AFTRA refused to delay, that could change the tone of the rally.

NEC members voted 13-11 in favor of going forward with an educational campaign for members about the downfalls of the AFTRA contract that would cost at least $75,000 of guild funds, which already had been set aside for negotiations.

SAG said the vote -- which was split between Hollywood NEC members, who voted in favor, and East Coast and regional members, who opposed -- was about the AFTRA campaign and not about the budget for it, as previously reported.

In the meantime, some SAG members are reaching out to Rosenberg about the anti-AFTRA action. Todd Hissong, president of SAG's Chicago branch, said SAG and AFTRA members in his city have sent Rosenberg and others an "advisory motion" asking them to call off the campaign.

"We are not telling anybody how to vote on the AFTRA contract," he said. "(The campaign) is an unconscionable waste of our resources and our time. And Chicago's rank and file does not support it."

AFTRA and the AMPTP reached their deal May 28, and AFTRA's national board voted Friday to send the new deal to its members for ratification. That vote is expected before July 7.

SAG and AFTRA have Los Angeles membership meetings planned this week. SAG will hold a town hall meeting tonight; AFTRA is set to meet Thursday night.

[VDOVault]

I have seen video online of the June 9th rally and I can say that I recognized many writers at the event besides Patric Verrone (including members of the legendary Pink Hat Brigade, the women sci-fi writers). So I call Bill Bartram on his/her/it's assertion that WGA members didn't show up. Besides Bartram's last post was made 2 days before the rally so why should he/she/it be believed when there is plenty of evidence to the contrary online?

As for whomever Bill Bartram may or may not be, he/she/it sure sounds a lot like someone who is leaving the same comments all over the Internet unattributed and supposedly in an untraceable fashion just to stir the pot in as many places online as possible and pimp the unattributed and supposedly untraceable SAG Watch website in as many places as possible.

And for the record I have made phone calls to ex NFL player friends of mine regarding Doug Allen and none of them have any issues with Doug Allen or Upshaw or the 1974 scabbing. Apparently Bartram is still hung up on labor disputes in the actors unions that few members remember or care about from decades ago.

[Bill Bartram]

VDOV,
Cast aspersions as you will, sir. If you read my first post you'll see that I referred to the 5757 Wilshire "demonstration" in the future tense, preceded by a possibly too-snarky headline .

When I walked your picket line last year at WB many writers looked at my SAG hat and AFTRA t-shirt and said, "What's AFTRA?" I'm trying to answer that question here. Either one is interested in the real story, or one can continue with the dominant cultural habit of bumper-sticker politics.

When you say, "Leaving the same comments all over the internet," fact is there are thousands of us who feel intra-union feuds & attacks are a plague on the union movement as a whole in Hollywood. Don't dismiss consensus amongst working performers as "the same comments." There are 120,000 members of SAG. 44,000 of us also belong to AFTRA. Surely you can imagine there are a lot of us who think that this "war" is a counterproductive strategy and probably an illegal use of SAG staff-time and our dues money.

And regarding Mr. Allen's 1974 crossing of his own picket line as a rookie, there were many vet Bills who were disgusted. (It's in the coffee-table Bills history book & news articles of the time.) How did you feel about writers crossing YOUR picket line last year? WGA listed their names on the WGA site.

[Carine]

So why are you continuing it ? You're the one who is taking the B& B pretext to justify the AFTRA position, you're the one who is calling Justine Bateman names. and Please don't tell me it's not ehr you were talking, because I have seen the exact same sentence about her on every other board I have read.

You're saying you're tired of the feud. Then why are you giving it fire ?

If only you were advocating peace, but you're not, you're attacking SAG leadership on a website that is NOT a SAG website. Talk about wanting to bury the hatchett. That's definitely not the way to go.

And before you go on, neither vdo or me are WGA.

As for the fact that a member of the WGA had no idea what AFTRA is, it's laughable. Or he/she was an ignorant.

[VDOVault]

Bonsoir Carine!

Plus ca change plus c'est la meme chose avec certain des 'internet posters' et ses comrades, n'est pas?

Comment dit on 'LOL' en francais?

[Carine]

we use 'MDR' for mort de rire, laughing to death. It's not literal but that's the one we use.

Yeah, it's really same old same old. :D

[VDOVault]

If you're so anti-attack, why are you here attacking SAG and one or more unnamed SAG board members (from your rantings I have no idea who you are mad at or why...what you say is very confusing because everyone except Doug Allen and Alan Rosenberg you have chosen not to name them)? To keep the readers here from being confused you could at least give them pseudonyms...just like yours. Pick some name that's not in IMDB if you like or call them SAG Board Member #1, SAG Board Member #2, etc.

And if you hate SAG so much why don't you either 1) quit SAG entirely and stop going out on SAG jobs concentrating exclusively on AEA & AFTRA jobs or 2) go financial core (or whatever SAG's equivalent of it is) if you really need to keep working SAG jobs?

Finally can you get me the name of the Buffalo Bills book and its author/editor and a link to it on Amazon? I'd like to read it for myself.

And for the record I'm not a writer. I do support the WGA though.

[Bill Bartram]

C'est tres amusant, mes amis. Je suis un de beaucoups de internet posters qui voudrais la verité...

Q #1 - the money ain't bad
Q#2 - financial core is for wimps
Q#3 - http://www.amazon.com/RELENTLESS-Hard-Hitting-History-Buffalo-Footb...

[VDOVault]

Q#1...all the actors I have heard from so far say the SAG bucks are *better* than AFTRA bucks
Q#2...Charleton Heston went fi-core over how SAG spent money towards political causes (that had nothing to do with internal union politics) he didn't support and no way would I call him a wimp or not a union supporter (I forget how many terms he was SAG's president...six?)
Q#3...I'll see if I can hunt myself down a copy of the book...thanks for posting the link