​Richert. Versus. WGA

William Richert Sept 7 2015

Yesterday at 3:45pm ·

12 YEARS LATER: THOUGHTS BEFORE LABOR DAY ON LABOR'S LOVE LOST

I wrote this letter which I sent to Tom Bower 12 years ago after a nightmare thought that SAG and AFTRA might merge and
"organize" in "solidarity" not only all the actors but broadcast talent too, and then with the Writer's Guild and Director's guild, the entire culture of art and entertainment would be under the control of the basic criminals who've run the unions for decades.

Well, I'll be darned, it happened.

I will look at this letter again and see about revisions, but the point is that there is among us a group of Bad Americans, with some residing in Hollywood Guilds, where the artists are encouged to turn on each other and spy on each other, especially in the WGA, and we have to look out for ourselves, as we are the new Native Americans, y'might say, and you see what these types did to our ancestors the Iriquois and Comanches and Algonquins, even though these Indians, along with Ben Franklin and Co., helped shape our Democracy (which is still new and fragile in terms of humankind, and may not last.)

Unions are bonded with their host providers, the corporations, it should be noted, which is why SAG and others were against the rise of the minimum wage, even though SAG daily rates are way higher than any day laborers, though day laborers are more guaranteed of work than any actor these days, due to SAG policies and leaders, in solidarity with themselves and their lawyers and their bank accounts.

For example, David Young and Tony Segall over at the WGAw have become multi-millionaires in payoffs to themselves for their efforts in "leading" the 2007 strike which cut off the flow of work for thousands of free lance screenwriters, and with them the scripts and roles that could have employed even thousands more actors.

Patric Verrone, the group writer turned producer, led the strike which really only benefited the "Showrunners" earning upwards of 200K per show. The leaders of the strike complained that "Middle class" writers (sic) were only earning a medium $80K per year.

So they shut the whole industry down, as Tony Segall said he could do in articles in legal journals written as early as 2002. The WGAw is run by producers working with the studios and the gains they make -- check out the income for the "new Media" in their accountings -- after 7 yeas it's up to maybe 20 million plus, while during the strike alone the LA community lost upwards of 2.9 billion and the losses to actors and others who work with films continue to mount, as much work opportunity is lost forever.

Now Verrone and others want more, and are starting threats to deal hard in upcoming negotiations - Etc. -- this grab of the opportunity of freelance writers and actors -- all of us independent contractors in a business sense -- happens only happens because we are mostly loners, writers and actors and directors, and do not congregate on factory floors or the halls of supermarkets, and rely on "leaders" like John Wells, a writer-producer making hundred of millions per year, bless him, due to the high earnings possible in our business.

But then he and the others cry poor, while the poorest really suffer.

How much SAG has stolen from actors pre-2011, for the records have been sealed by a Judge who later mysteriously quit -- is yet to be discovered.

My own foreign levy lawsuit -- I say, "My own" because I own it together with a giant class of writers "similarly situated" -- which in class action parlance means also stolen from -- is awaiting another day or year in court, but the billions of stolen funds, taken from individual writers across the land, has got to be accounted for by the likes of Carl Gottlieb and Dan Pietrie and Patric Verrone, who paid the lawyers who fought the case that would have opened the truth.

But the "settlement" is based on fraud, as I have said and say again, in honor of labor day.

Artists are not "workers," even though they're always working.

Now we gotta work on this: getting the union parasites out of our hair and consciousness.

I sent this letter to Tom Bower 12 years ago as I knew him to be a stand-up guy and fearless, as he'd have to be.

In the letter to Tom I named the new union group AIWA and said a lot of stuff that today -- over a decade later -- borders on nonsense, perhaps, but you gotta consider the dead weight and dishonorableness of the nonsense involved.

TO: TOM Tom Bower
FR: BILL RICHERT

May 28, 2003

Dear Tom,

I am sending you some raw data & observations relating to the fundamental changes in the life of Screen Actors Guild members which will occur when or if SAG joins the International Alliance of Media Artists “AIMA.”

These points are made in full in a letter I’m writing to you, a letter which has grown to 20 single spaced pages and which I’m afraid may get longer if I don’t email it soon. In fact, it got so complicated I might spare you the long version entirely.

In the meantime, here are some of my observations about what is underneath the entire push for a SAG/AFTRA merger, beyond the immediate furor over health insurance, which obviously comes only after the ability to work occurs.

You may not agree with me on all this, but since you are the only human to return any of my letters over the past 15 years to SAG, you get to be the audience. Here are some abridgments:

WHAT MEANS POWER? WHOSE POWER IS IT?

1.) President Gilbert’s constant assertion that SAG is without adequate “power” is not proven by the facts. Yet getting power is the underlying mover for the entire push for a merger. It is a bogus issue, and misleads the membership by creating fear. One only need glance at SAG’s most recent display of “power,” the strike against advertisers, to see that the singular power of SAG not only changed the way advertisers spend money, but impacted the daily lives of the near-million Los Angeles residents who derive at least some income from the day-by-day working commercial actor. The Mayor of Los Angeles, during the strike, estimated that the city was losing as much as one billion dollars a day. In ancillary damage, thousands of workers in SAG, AFTRA, IATSE, DAG and the WGA (commercials have to be written) lost short-term health benefits and, in many cases, never found work at all. The economic benefits to SAG members lost during the last display of SAG power will never be recovered. SAG has power aplenty without another “power” player. In fact, if AFRA were such a great “power” partner, there would be no doubts about AFTRA’s pay structures or health plans. If SAG were to burp today about a strike at the next contract expiration, you can be assured that some movies or series set to employ SAG actors would be shelved. President Gilbert is using a cheap scare tactic when she says SAG lacks power and needs to merge with AFTRA and AFRA. SAG has enourmous power. It is the use of power that is a question here.

WHAT HAS SAG TO DO WITH AFTRA’S LOWER PAY RATES?

2.) President Gilbert's ongoing statements to SAG members, when not addressing the “feasibility” of a merger between SAG & AFRTRA Pension and Health programs, declaim about the inequity between actors being paid for working with the new digital technology and actors being paid for film. President Gilbert decrys the fact that videotape programs, digital or otherwise, pay less than the actors get for filmed shows. President Gilbert is generous in her concern for AFTRA taped contracts, who she says are being exploited by the new digital technology. If her worry is for the jobs of AFTRA actors in the multitude of soap operas and hour-long taped programs which are the mainstay of daytime television – giving jobs to both SAG and AFTRA talent – she must provide evidence of some study of what would happen to the overall employment for daytime actors under AFTRA and SAG contracts if they were to suddenly adopt SAG pay schedules under the new union AIMA. It is not only the recording medium of digital or film that applies daytime soaps. Soap actors, by nature of the work itself, must work long hours each day to turn out 60 or 90 minutes of drama or comedy, sometimes getting pages of dialogue the night before taping. This is a different business than “film.” At SAG standard rates of upwards of $600 per day plus overtime and meal penalties, and the additional salaries of DGA members and Teamsters which come along with the enforcement of SAG contracts, the entry-level actor on a daily soap could earn upwards of half a million to a million dollars per year plus additional costs for pension and welfare not only for the actor, but the DGA and Teamsters who come with the “package”. This may sound great on the surface, but you can bet that the number those employed in the casts of Soaps would decline in direct proportion to the profitability of the shows. This would mean higher pay for a few, but fewer jobs overall. SAG actors would no longer work in soaps differently from AFTRA because all actors would be AIMA. Therefore, the decline in work would be uniform, affecting both SAG and AFTRA. Does this really benefit present day AFTRA or SAG actors? Downsizing has already happened in the motion picture industry, even as the average studio budgets hit 80 million. Films that once had giant casts with many roles exist no longer, with the plumb roles and big bucks concentrated in the few “name” actors. This syndrome could easily alter the whole of daytime television, resulting in soap casts of big names and fewer plot lines employing fewer actors. Daytime television might even become like nighttime television, with far more “reality” shows employing few or no actors or writers. WGA already has the kind of cross-jurisdiction President Gilbert wants for SAG. WGA President John Wells, who engineered a defacto strike of the WGA not long ago, won some gains for writers already working, but hardly any writers benefited because all their jobs disappeared. There are far fewer writers employed in dramas or comedies on telvision today than when John Wells started his tenure. Mr. Wells can argue that in some ways his tactics were a success. He himself, as a producer, now earns roughly 120 million times the amount earned by 85 percent of the other members of his union.

IS FEASIBILITY THE MOST DESIRABLE ATTRIBUTE IN A PARTNERSHIP?

3.) In a recent letter to SAG membership, the two Presidents of SAG/AFTRA jointly wrote that the discovery of irregularities in the flow of information about a financial feasibility study called The Mercer Report was actually the result of manipulation on the part of “management,” the Presidents assert wants to scuttle the SAG/AFTRA merger. In fact the revelations about the Mercer report may from SAG’s own Trustees, whose job it is to represent the membership of SAG above all other interests, including Union management. The Mercer report cost SAG one and ½ million dollars to prepare (at least.) Yet, there was no study at all of making the present SAG health plan more viable, or to find ways to bring new investment to Hollywood community for increased work. President Gilbert and President Connolly act as one in saying that there is “feasibility” in making the merger work. There is no mention by President Gilbert that the present SAG Pension and Health Fund has been an industry standard for years. It has been fought for by long years of labor. It has 209 million dollars in credit. President Gilbert of SAG, on the same page and in partnership with President Connolly of AFTRA, says that the benefits of the merger will be good for SAG health funds and cost less and provide more. SAG website documents say that when the Mercer Report is concluded, sometime after the SAG/AFTRA merger, the report is sure to say that the merger was better for SAG members. This is an affront to decades of work on the present SAG health plans. It envisions a smooth move in a new union of which SAG will be a 1/3 affiliate and the final control of SAG's money and health plans will reside with a council of three Affiliate Presidents, SAG being only one of them. It is beyond comprehension why President Gilbert would participate in the expenditure of millions of dollars for an inconclusive study with a disputed outcome, when the money could be better spent making any improvements to the present plan, and searching out creative ways for SAG to extend the present benefits of current members. President Gilbert and President Connolly have not disclosed the fact that in 2002 AFTRA Pension and Welfare had to pay out $8.5 million in a lawsuit which claimed that AFTRA Trustees were not acting in the interests of the membership. To anybody watching this or reading about this, it is clear that the merger agenda on the part of the two Presidents is being marshaled along with the support of mostly “silent” other partners, like Sweeny of the AFL-CIO and whoever is the president of the 3rd Affiliate, AFRA, a union I first heard about when reading the AIMA Constitution. A future state of these unions, which does not yet exist, nonetheless takes precedent over the reality that SAG today is powerful and healthy, with a cash reserve in its health plan 20 times that of AFTRA. Any study of the new AIMA Constitution shows that the merger of these three unions will be complex and perhaps more divisive among their memberships than any confrontation with “management/producers/studios” has ever been in history. SAG is a powerful union in its own right. Its membership is suffering a loss of benefits because fewer actors are working in fewer scripted films or Network series. When (if) jobs return, so will the benefits for the SAG health programs, which at their best apply only to 25-30 percent of the membership. Not only does President Gilbert fail to inform the SAG voters about AFTRA's court case, but also for many months the SAG President has shared joint stationery with AFTRA and joint letters with AFTRA. She already engages in partnership duties and implements policies which SAG members have not yet voted for. This is a defacto partnership with AFTRA. This is an abuse of power.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WEAKNESS
4.) We know from the stock market that there is a psychology of investment and return. SAG is being demoralized by conflict which increases the feeling of powerlessness among its members. Said Claude-Levi Strauss, “powerlessness corrupts.” The entire stated motivation for this merger – that it is a “partnership for power” – implies powerless on the part of the participants as separate entities. “Feasibility” for a partnership is the lowest of reasons for a life-changing bond, in fact it is not a reason at all. This assertion of weakness is per se a kind of failure of the will on the part of SAG leadership. President Gilbert says that she and the present Union management will not able to sit across from “management” at the future contract negotiations and feel “powerful,” even with the backing of 110,000 actors. Apparently SAG will feel “powerful” only with the additional clout broadcasters and newscasters and sportscasters and daytime drama stars, with each of their own differing needs. SAG's proclaimed lack of power starts at the top, with the elected President. To say that SAG has not enough power is to create a climate of fear and intimidation among SAG membership, especially when the statement is made by two union Presidents at once, on the same letterhead.
5.) President Gilbert and President Connolly, by placing their logos side by side on their mutual stationery, suggest that they will be the two partners in a SAG and AFTRA merger.
6.) This is a huge message, and it is a huge hoax. When SAG joins AFTRA the SAG actors will go from having 100 percent of the say in their affairs to having a 33 1/3 percent actual say in their affairs, and SAG may be overruled. All power in AIMA rests with the 3 President Council, made up of AFTRA, SAG and AFRA. The boards of these respective unions may vote and suggest, but the 3 President Council and the Executive Director of AIMA have the final say in all matters.
7.) And what if, let us say, the coming reports show SAG was better off without the Merger? Too late. The only way SAG could find its way out of the grip of AIMA would be with a vote of 66 percent of the various boards and Presidents of the three unions. However, even this “vote” would be the subject of the review of the Council, which has the final say under the AIMA Constitution. In short, if SAG signs on to this merger, it won’t be long before all SAG actors will be AIMA actors, and all creative talent will become “performers” with all rights and privileges controlled by the AIMA. This is a brave new world and as much study should be devoted to the reality of that as to the reality of that one controversial part of it, the health component.
8.) Not only should there be full and complete disclosure of all studies paid for by the membership of SAG, but there should be full and complete disclosure of all memos, letters and meetings between SAG, AFTRA and Sweeny of the AFL-CIO.
9.) The SAG membership is being railroaded and needs to know why.

FROM ‘THE ALLIANCE OF INTERNATIONAL MEDIA ARTISTS CONSTITUTION’

ARTICLE I: To the extent that any provision of an Affiliate or Local Branch Constitution and By-Laws or Rule conflicts with aprovision of this Constitution and any amendment thereto, this Constitution shall govern. Each Affiliate Constitution and By-Laws and each Local Branch Constitution and By-Laws shall contain a provision to the same effect.

D. There shall be three (3) Affiliates of the Union known as the Screen Actors Guild
(“SAG”), the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (“AFTRA”)
and the American Federation of Recording Artists (“AFRA”). Each of these
Affiliates has been created based on the nature of the work performed by its
members under collective bargaining agreements covering such work.

And, if SAG decides it made a mistake and wants to get out of AIMA? Not a chance:

A. The Union may be dissolved by resolution of the Council only if ratified by a two-thirds (2/3) majority of the Boards of at least two (2) of the Affiliates and thereafter by two-thirds (2/3) of the Union members in good standing voting in a referendum (one [1] vote per member).

It ought to be kept in mind that in the above instance of 1 voter per member, SAG members will be in the minority, substantially, as members of only 1 Affiliate of AIMA, that formerly independent group of Actors known as The Screen Actors Guild. SAG will be no more in charge of its own destiny.

It seems to me that SAG should think more than once or twice before signing on to this very binding contract. Membership should demand and get all related materials, and should know who is really running SAG if the leadership is looking for more “power,” before any ballots are sent out.

This June, days away, the “power” in question will appear to be in the hands of SAG voters. If the vote takes place and is close, then the review of the SAG vote will include forces from AIMA and AFTRA and AFRA and AFL-CIO. This could put SAG in the kind of situation the Democrats and Republics were in during the last election. There would occur a continuation of the never-ending situation which exists right now: namely, a defacto merger between the Presidents of SAG and AFTRA with the same kind of feeling of powerlessness among the membership. In my view, the vote should be canceled because of the gravity of the unanswered questions.

That’s it for now, Tom. You may not agree with some of these points, but it’s hard not to get all fired up about what is happening to SAG, which is about give up its soul and its heart and its history to become a part of the International Alliance of Media Artists under the umbrella of the AFL-CIO. The Artist part of the new name may be correct, but this “international alliance” means that SAG will lose autonomy and identity forever. SAG will lose all of its power, fait accompli. That may not be in best interests of the very special SAG artists.

Thanks for your kind attention.

Regards,

Bill Richert
CcDave McNary, Variety
williamrichert.com

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Tom Bower A small group of us fought off merger as long as we could. We were the "Last of the Mohicans", as there had been 16 other unsuccessful attempts to merge over the history of Screen Actors Guild and AFTRA. Our group helped to defeat Merger twice, and then the inevitable happened. The majority of a small minority of voters got hoodwinked into believing that merger was to be our savior. That there was "strength in numbers". That merger would give us better contracts and strengthen our Pension and Health plans. Quite the opposite is true. We'll never be able to merge the plans. Truth is, there's now more pieces of the pie, and the pie gets smaller. The 'end of days' is coming for our residuals. Re-use of all content is being moved over to streaming for which we get very, very little in the way of residuals. Since we cannot merge the Pension and Health plans, the bulk of contributions from Television, goes over to an inferior AFTRA plan that most of us vested in the SAG plan will never see. We, the membership of SAG-AFTRA; are in 'a race to the bottom'. The Lowest common denominator that Management has in store for us, gratis the SAG- AFTRA leadership. We now encourage and try to help in the good fight that Bill Richert has been waging. Happy Labor Day.

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