By Eugene Boggs
In case you haven't heard, a six-month-long, nationwide strike against some of the largest, most globalized corporations in the U.S. ended at the end of October. This strike saw hundreds of workers on picket lines from coast to coast. Factories were brought to a standstill, lost revenue for the corporations involved ran into the hundred of millions of dollars. The striking workers endured over $2,000,000 per day in lost earnings. Among them were some of the most well-known and most admired persons on earth.
And yet, it's likely that you knew nothing of this strike. How come this is news to you (but not to the mass media)? And what caused it?
This year, the final year of a three-year contract, the actors unions — the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and the American Federation of Television and Radio Actors (AFTRA) — wanted to revise the payment structure for performances in commercials shown on cable TV.
Among the small percentage (approximately one fifth) of union film, television and radio performers who actually support themselves predominantly by performing, far more make their living acting in commercials than in feature films, television or radio. These commercial actors — SAG and AFTRA's "middle class" — were very displeased with the last commercials contract. With more and more of the commercials in which these actors work finding their way to cable TV, payment had become a crucial issue.
A unique dynamic of commercial work needs some brief explanation here. An actor who performs in a successful (i.e., heavily played) commercial is very likely to become "overexposed." This means that the actor, because closely identified by viewers with the product he or she is pitching, will find it difficult to be hired for virtually any other commercial work, for a time at least. Largely to offset this, payment for these performances has involved both a flat fee for the on-camera work plus a "residual" payment for each airing. So the more one is overexposed (by repeated airings) and, hence, made unemployable, the more one earns for that job.
However, the payment structure for cable TV use of commercials has no residuals component. It is, effectively, a flat fee structure with fees varying with the market size of the given cable network. The more audience for a given network, the higher the pay, but with no residuals.
The commercial actors wanted this issue addressed in their last contract, in 1997. As far as they were concerned, it was not. In the course of three annual SAG elections, 1997, 1998 and 1999, commercial actors essentially took control of the union's Hollywood portion of the board of directors. It was mainly this community, this issue and the employers' response that led to the strike.
The employers — ad agencies that employ commercial actors — maintained that the marked growth of cable television only served to fragment the viewers who, until the rise of cable, had largely been a captive audience for the then-three broadcast networks, ABC, CBS and NBC. Being more fragmented, a commercial message has less impact and thus is less effective in selling the product, they say. So, pay for actors working in today's commercials shown on cable should, from the employers' perspective, be less than for broadcast commercials.
Thus, at the bargaining table in spring 2000, the agencies' resistance to a revision of the cable payment structure to match the "pay-per-play" approach used for broadcast commercials had been anticipated by the unions. What the unions had not expected was the agencies' counterproposal seeking the replacement of the pay-per-play structure of broadcast commercials by the fixed fee approach of cable, in other words, a direct rollback or take-away regarding performers' pay. The professed reason for this rollback demand was the loss of audience by the broadcast networks to cable!
Faced with a bargaining impasse and the employers' implicit yet stark ultimatum, "Fight or die," SAG and AFTRA went on strike May 1.
No Film at 11
Though there was mass media coverage of some events during the strike, especially the major LA and New York rallies that featured big gatherings of stars, and virtually daily coverage in the Hollywood trade press, Daily Variety, The Hollywood Reporter and others, general circulation newspapers and magazines gave the strike little attention, even in Los Angeles, where the strike was putting a significant dent in the local economy. Its presence on television was almost entirely a matter of union members adding some reference in talk show interviews and sketches ("Today," Jay Leno's work on "The Tonight Show," and others) or ribbon-wearing occasions, the most prominent of which was last fall's Emmy Awards show, where yellow ribbons were widely in evidence, though most of the audience probably had no idea what they symbolized. Still, it was an effective message to the agencies and advertisers that the strike was supported by stars, and that was important.
Why, then, did a recent janitors strike in LA get more TV news coverage and far more public awareness and support than the SAG-AFTRA strike? One answer is that the public sees janitors and delivery people and migrant farm laborers as performing hard work that benefits society, work most people are glad not to have do themselves. The case that such workers are underpaid is not a hard one to make.
By contrast, most television commercials are regarded, especially by progressive elements in society that might otherwise be seen as the natural supporters of striking workers, as cultural offal to be ignored, muted and clicked away from at every opportunity. One might enthusiastically support sanitation workers who rid the streets of garbage. That same level of support or even sympathy is unlikely for someone perceived to be making a good living by helping to create cultural pollution, i.e., commercials.
The economic dynamics of performers seeking a fair share of ad production revenue were not very easy to present on television. Stars on the picket lines would draw cameras, but those same stars often give the false notion that all movie and TV actors are rich. The fact was not made clear, for example, that only five to 10 percent of SAG members earn enough from film and TV roles to qualify for SAG's health insurance, which requires a minimum of $7,500 in annual earnings.
But the media avoidance of the strike was widely perceived in the union ranks as having another, more fundamental source. Increasingly, the networks are owned by large, transnational corporate entities that are antagonistic to organized labor in any context, but certainly to any efforts against their ad agency and corporate counterparts. If General Electric is both your network's owner and a major advertiser, are you, Ms. or Mr. Local News Director, going to cover the picketing of GE's efforts to shoot commercials with scab talent? Is an answer necessary?
The Strike Is Settled
What then finally brought the October 22 settlement, on terms both sides claimed as a victory? Well, despite all the effort put into the picketing, its effect was, in the view of some veterans of Hollywood labor strife, largely only symbolic. Where it was most effective was not in shutting down commercial shoots, but in halting or hampering other types of industrial activity by shifting strike actions to the advertisers themselves, such as large auto makers and prepared-food companies. When a picket line outside an auto assembly plant is honored by Teamster drivers, the plant soon has to shut down. That happened on several occasions. That gets the employers' attention the way picketing a San Fernando Valley McDonald's or a beer-commercial shoot on a Manhattan street never will. The success of this tactic would not have been possible without the support and cooperation of traditional "blue collar" unions and their individual members — the Teamsters, the United Auto Workers, the Communication Workers of America and many others. This was all the more remarkable given the traditional distance the actors unions have kept from "real" labor. This year, however, SAG and AFTRA approached the AFL-CIO at the outset for advice and support.
Along with the solidarity provided by sister unions, the performers' unions were bolstered by the virtually unanimous refusal of stars to do struck work. With the exceptions of some well-known athletes such as Tiger Woods, who are regarded as sort of "technical" union cardholders, and a few high-profile actors such as, most notably, Elizabeth Hurley (who was fined $100,000 for her transgression), stars did not cross the lines. They also kept important product campaigns from being launched or continued and generated what little public awareness and support there was for this strike.
The settlement (which was ratified by the unions' membership by a vote of 96 percent for to 3.8 percent against, as announced a few weeks ago) maintains the pay structure status quo in broadcast commercials and cable with significant pay increases within the established structures. The employers also accepted for the first time Internet-specific productions as unionized work, albeit with, as yet, no contractually prescribed pay scales. By their show of militancy and determination (some critics would call it foolhardy obstinacy), the strikers were able to get what many see as their biggest gain — they put the fear of God into the movie studios and TV networks regarding the 2001 theatrical-TV contract negotiations. This is the contract under which stars and principal actors (those with speaking parts) work in the production of feature films and TV shows. While it's not yet clear if a strike will ensue, as recently as the first week in December the Los Angeles Times (not just the industry trade papers) was reporting on its front page that a "de facto strike" was already nearly in place in Hollywood, with productions being completed and stockpiled or put off in anticipation of possible strikes in mid-2001 by the performers' unions and the Writers Guild, all of which have contracts ending by mid-year.
Daily Variety reported in its December 7 issue that Peter Chernin, chief financial officer of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, which owns the 20th Century Fox movie studio and the Fox television network, believes a strike would be "good news" for his company, since it can be more profitable not to make new movies or dramatic (as distinct from "reality-based") TV shows. If Chernin's view is widely held in Hollywood executive suites, the prospects for labor peace are not good. Hollywood may be well on the way to becoming the center of labor resistance to McWorldism in the United States.
The just ended SAG-AFTRA strike and the potential one that may occur in 2001 are significant beyond the entertainment industry. The economic struggles include concerns about corporate globalization, fair trade vs. free trade, the impact of new technologies on workers and cultures, and brought together Teamsters, environmentalists, trade unionists and social activists in Seattle, Washington and at both national political party conventions in Philadelphia and Los Angeles. Movies and televisions shows are the most successful American exports and yield the country's biggest international trade surplus. That's in an economy that otherwise is characterized by a huge trade deficit. These apparently arcane labor struggles in one of the most globalized businesses in the world are some of the opening battles in the big war to come to save national economic and political sovereignty — as well as organized labor as more than a token, vestigial symbol.
— Eugene Boggs is a professor of law at the University of West Los Angeles, a background actor when he can get work and a member of the board of directors of the Screen Actors Guild. The views he expressed in this article are his alone and do not necessarily represent those of the Screen Actors Guild.
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