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Could A SAG Civil War Prevent An Actors Strike?
The Screen Actors Guild (SAG) is anything but united right now… and that’s a very good thing for the movie industry and everyone involved with it as a whole.
Here’s the basic cole’s notes version:
– The SAG leadership has called for e vote authorizing the leadership to call a strike if negotiations with eh Producers Association fails.
– The East Coast faction of SAG is screaming at the West coast faction to NOT strike… things have gotten heated
– Now, a bunch of big name actors have sent a petition to the SAG leadership saying they don’t support any strike action. The names on the list include: George Clooney, Tom Hanks, Alec Baldwin, Cameron Diaz, Steve Carell, Jennifer Garner, Charlize Theron, Matt Damon, Morgan Freeman, David Boreanaz, Ewan McGregor, Sally Field, Michael C. Hall, Felicity Huffman, Rob Lowe, Kevin Spacey, Josh Brolin, Pierce Brosnan, Glenn Close, Donald Sutherland, Billy Crystal, Ted Danson, Kelsey Grammer, Edward Norton, Tobey Maguire, Bradley Whitford and Helen Hunt.
– The language of the petition sent to the leadership reads like this: “”We feel very strongly that SAG members should not vote to authorize a strike at this time. We don’t think that an authorization can be looked at as merely a bargaining tool. It must be looked at as what it is—an agreement to strike if negotiations fail. We support our union and we support the issues we’re fighting for, but we do not believe in all good conscience that now is the time to be putting people out of work.”
Ok… so my thoughts on the topic are as follows:
You would have to have the intelligence of a brain dead moose to even consider saying the word “strike” right now in the current economic environment both the industry and the country finds itself in. Complete and total morons. To strike now, still in the horrible aftermath of the WGA strike (which no one won and everybody lost) and in the current financial crisis the entire country finds itself in, would be the act of total imbeciles.
Luckily, it seems like he wise members of the east coast faction of SAG as well as the actors mentioned above realize that now is not to the time for a fight. Wait till the time is right, then go after what you want or need. Don’t be stupid and sink the whole ship just to get an extra life jacket.
Actually if the WGA hadn’t gone on strike, they would have gotten monumentally screwed. It’s not perfect, but they did get something out of it. I picketed with them for weeks even though I’m not a member and I know people who were affected on all sides. There’s too many people in my own union who think they should have shut up and stayed miserable like the rest of us, which is completely retarded. A union’s supposed to fight for you and you should get paid for your work instead of boned, refused pay, and then have existing benefits taken away. It was a balls move on the side of the studios and the strike happened for good reason.
But I agree with the rest. The economy’s in too much trouble right now for a strike to have any impact, public favor would probably work against them, and some folks were saying on Nikki Finke’s site that the industry would just go AFTRA if they tried a strike. SAG needs a fair deal, but this might be something to negotiate later, and if they’re not united right now, it’ll just be easier for the studios to get through to them. Strike later, not now.
John, your thoughts are exactly my thoughts.
If a strike occured there would little sympathy or support and a pile of blacklash.
Exactamundo. Not to mention that TV has not regained some of the audience it lost during the WGA strike. These viewers realised that there’s life beyond tv watching! An SGA strike will siphon off more viewers, something they can’t afford now.
Although I sympathise with SGA’s reasons for the strike, I sympathise with the production crew the most. IN the WGA strikes, they suffered the most. Having the SGA strike will be a double whammy for them, especially since many have not yet recovered from the WGA strike.
Someone should form a union for these folks to protect them from all these WGA and SGA strikes… ;)
Oops, I mean SAG, not SGA (bangs head on wall)