Actors call strike on May Day

By Joseph Reed Petticrew

NEW YORK - Spot commercial actors from the Screen Actors Guild and from the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) called for their members to withhold their services from producers of TV and radio commercials nationwide.

Rallies were held on this labor day throughout the country, significantly in Los Angeles at the La Brea Tar Pits, and here in Bryant Park just behind the New York Public Library. Other rallies were held in Chicago, Seattle, Denver, San Francisco, and many other cities.

The joint board of SAG/AFTRA has asked for strong union support from their fellow performers worldwide and they have got it. Entertainment unions from the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and Europe have shown solidarity with the strikers and have issued official statements that their members will honor the picket lines, and that they will not participate when the producers move their operations out of the U.S. in an attempt to break the strike.

Ron Silver, president of Actors' Equity, wrote that "we have come to understand how intransigent the employers have been to date in the bargaining process. Their refusal to consider any of SAG/AFTRA's major proposals yet demanding cutbacks is dangerously close to and perhaps falls over into bad faith bargaining."

Thor Bishopric, president of Canada's ACTRA, has stated that his union "will instruct its 15,000 members in Canada to not accept SAG and AFTRA-struck work." Similar responses from unions both inside and outside the entertainment industry are coming in by the hundreds.

One of the key issues is in the production industry's attempt to eliminate the standard "pay-for-play" contracts with their actors, wanting instead to pay them a flat fee of the principal on-camera rate ($2,575) which would effectively roll back a sizable amount of income for the actors. Many actors work in other fields, like the restaurant industry, to make ends meet. These actors depend on the royalties they receive - at times large but mostly small - from their multiple appearances on TV and radio. The industry for which they work makes billions of dollars annually.

Connected to the pay-for-play issue is the fact that there is presently no viable system in place to monitor these "spots," which opens the door for unscrupulous producers and advertising agencies to get by with showing the commercials without paying the actors.

The union has called for a much better monitoring system, which would go far in eliminating this form of corporate theft.

Another concern is the appearance on the Internet of broadcast and cable commercials. The industry is taking advantage of the power of the Internet by recycling their broadcast and cable spots on the new medium while paying the actors only a fraction of their usual royalties. In addition, many commercials are now being made for "initial use" on the Internet and the union has called for a better system of payments than is currently in place.

When most of us think of actors or, for that matter, sports figures, we tend to see only the "glamour," the prestige, the celebrities of these professions.

We often lose sight of how short-lived and transitory are the careers of most who work in these professions. Actors depend on fair payment for their work. Like any other work, they rely completely on dependable job security. This they see as their right. The industry for its part, seems intent on denying this right.