New Dispute Looms As Actors’ Contracts Expire

Lisbeth Latham

On June 30, the collective agreements covering actors in the US television industry expired.

The negotiations for a new agreement, which started in mid-April, have grown increasingly heated. The tensions are not only between the large media conglomerates — represented by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), on the one hand, and the unions representing actors, the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and the American Federation of Television and Radio Arts (AFTRA), on the other — but between the unions themselves.


The central point that has emerged, as in the writers’ strike ealier this year, has been what the artists’ share of revenues (residuals) from “new media”, such as the internet, should be. The AFTRA have reached a tentative agreement with the AMPTP for work on primetime television shows and have began balloting its 70,000 members on June 17, with results expected on July 8.

However, the SAG leadership argue that the AFTRA-endorsed agreement is inadequate as it allows non-union new media production. It also fails to increase the income of working actors from current projects; does not increase pension/health contributions enough; provides no increases in residuals from DVDs; eliminates most residuals for reruns of productions made for new media.

SAG’s leadership also argues that the AFTRA agreement will undercut the bargaining position of the SAG and have launched a campaign urging the 44,000 members of SAG who are dual members of the AFTRA to vote against the tentative agreement.

Both unions have involved prominent actors campaigning for their position in the ballot. Tom Hanks, Sally Field, Kevin Spacey and Alec Baldwin have publicly campaigned for a “yes” vote, while Jack Nicholson, Ben Stiller, Nick Nolte, Sean Penn and Viggo Mortensen have actively supported the SAG’s “no” campaign.

On July 2, the AMPTP made what it has referred to as a final offer to the SAG. The SAG negotiating team have requested until July 7 to review the offer.

The AMPTP have made a number of statements that the industry is facing a de facto actors’ strike. On June 29, SAG president Alan Rosenberg told the Associated Press: “We have taken no steps to initiate a strike authorization vote by the members of Screen Actors Guild.” He continued, “any talk about a strike or a management lockout at this point is simply a distraction”.

A strike authorisation would require 75% majority vote of SAG’s 122,000 members. SAG has informed its members that they should continue to work and that this work will be continued under the conditions of the expired contract.

Originally published in Green Left Weekly #757

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Left-wing labour conference attacked

Lisbeth Latham

Union members and labour activists attending the Labor Notes Conference dinner on April 12 were attacked by bus loads of staff and members of the Service Employees Industrial Union (SEIU) — wearing purple SEIU t-shirts — who forced their way into the conference venue in Dearborn, Michigan. In the ensuing melee a number of people were injured.


Labor Notes is a labour movement magazine that seeks to build union militancy, rank-and-file solidarity and has acted as a networking tool between reform groups in the US union movement. Since 1981, bi-annual conferences have been held to bring union activists together.

The 2008 conference, aimed at examining approaches to “Rebuild Labor’s Power”, attracted more than 1000 people from 21 countries, the largest conference since 1997.

The SEIU’s attack is a consequence of the growing bitter dispute between the SEIU and the California Nurses Association (CNA), and its affiliate the National Nurses Organising Committee, over the organisation of nurses in Catholic Healthcare Partners (CHP) in Ohio.

The SEIU had negotiated for the CHP to approach the National Labor Relations Board to hold a union recognition ballot for registered nurses at nine of its hospitals in March. The SEIU was to be the only choice on the ballot.

Such a ballot would ordinarily be precipitated by a union membership card check to indicate that the union had support among the workforce. Such a check did not occurr. In response the CNA, which has also sought to organise nurses at the CHP, launched a campaign for nurses to be given a genuine choice in the union they join.

On March 12, days before the scheduled ballot, the SEIU announced that the ballot had been cancelled and launched a public attack on the CNA, accusing it of union-busting.

The attack on the Labor Notes Conference was aimed at disrupting the speech by CNA director Rose Anne DeMoro during the conference dinner. As there had been rumours of an attack on the conference, DeMoro cancelled her speech.

DeMoro had been invited to speak on CNA’s work to achieve the establishment of single-payer health insurance (where the government or a separate sub-contracting agency provides a universal system of health insurance) and successful campaign to win improved nurse-patient staffing ratios in California, which are the best in the US.

Mark Brenner, director of Labor Notes said “Labor Notes has always been a space for open debate, but when a union decides to engage in violence against their brothers and sisters, we draw a line. Violence within the labour movement is unacceptable and we call on the national leadership of SEIU, including President Andy Stern, to repudiate it.”

[For information on Labor Notes and the conference visit http://labornotes.org.]

Originally published in Green Left Weekly #747

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Writers’ strike holds strong

Lisbeth Latham

After starting contract negotiations on January 12, the Directors’ Guild of America reached a tentative agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers on January 17. It was expected that the DGA and AMPTP would come to an agreement, but the swiftness of the deal was a surprise, especially because there were six months remaining on the existing contract.


The AMPTP, the corporate media and sections of the Writers’ Guild of America (WGA) argue that the DGA’s new contract resolves many of the differences that are outstanding in the WGA contract, and that the main blockage in those negotiations has been the WGA leadership’s intransigence. There is, however, considerable doubt about whether the writers’ demands have been addressed, and their strike continues.

The only information about the directors’ agreement that has been made publicly available was that contained in a brief DGA media release on January 17, and the WGA is waiting for more information about the AMPTP’s offer before making a formal assessment.

On January 29, Doug Allen, the Screen Actors’ Guild (SAG) executive director and chief negotiator, and Allen Rosenberg, SAG president, wrote to SAG members criticising the DGA agreement. The SAG’s contract expires on June 30 and it is expected to make similar demands to those of the writers’ guild. In their letter to members, Allen and Rosenburg state: “Some have rushed to anoint their [the DGA] deal as the ‘solution’ for the entertainment industry. We believe that assessment is premature.”

A number of problems with the DGA contract are immediately apparent. The first is that many of the issues that are important to writers and other workers in the film and television industry — notably residuals (royalties) — are not as important to many DGA members, such as assistant directors, because they are not entitled to them.

Second, the offer made to the DGA around residuals is only 12.5% of the WGA’s claim. Third, many of the concessions made by the AMPTP contain large loopholes that make them virtually meaningless. For example, the deal offers the DGA jurisdiction over internet productions, yet the high minimum budget threshold excludes the majority of shows produced for the internet.

Despite these failings, the deal indicates the AMPTP’s willingness to begin to negotiate around issues of concern to writers, a shift that former WGA president John Wells and the SAG leadership attribute to the pressure created by the strike.

Nevertheless, there is also pressure on the WGA and its members to be “reasonable” and accept the studios’ offer, and the WGA on January 22 dropped its demand for automatic coverage for writers employed in reality TV and animation shows. Instead, the WGA will look for alternative avenues to unionise these workers.

The writers continue to hold strong, maintaining daily pickets outside the studios with support from other unions within and outside the industry. On January 28, more than 1000 people, including 500 SAG members, joined a Unity Day rally outside Fox Studios.

The big media conglomerates that make up the AMPTP are under a lot of pressure as their losses mount and new financial deadlines appear. The strike is estimated to have already cost the Los Angeles economy US$1.5 billion.

Although the WGA have agreed to not picket the Grammy Awards, no such agreement has been made for the Oscars on February 24. With the SAG and many individual actors, such as Viggio Mortensen and Daniel Day-Lewis, pledging not to cross WGA picket lines, the award ceremony looks likely to flop, potentially costing the American Broadcasting Company US$100 million.

Those award ceremonies that have gone ahead, such as the Screen Writers’ Guild Award, have become platforms for actors to pledge their support for the striking writers. In her award acceptance speech, Julie Christie said, “It’s lovely to receive an award from your own union, especially at a time when they’re being so forcefully reminded how important unions are”. Christie told Variety, “Without unions, we would not have anyone to represent us over injustices”.

Josh Brolin, in his acceptance speech, said: “It’s a risky movie, and it’s nice to have risky movies now, especially this year, which is a cornucopia of change … The studio system is backfiring and it’s fun for us actors.”

The AMPTP agreed on January 24 to begin informal discussions about reinitiating negotiations with the WGA. If the strike continues to the end of February, TV networks will face losing seasons of shows and the huge advertising revenue that comes with them.

While some producers have raised hopes that writers might return to work under an interim deal to allow the next TV season to be salvaged, this seems unlikely unless the AMPTP makes considerable concessions.

Originally published in Green Left Weekly #738

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Writers continue strike as directors negotiate contract

Lisbeth Latham

As Hollywood enters its award season, the 12,000 members of the Writers Guild of America (WGA) continue their strike that has shut down the majority of the US film and television industry since November 5. The Directors Guild of America (DGA) has also begun to renegotiate its contract.


Despite the size of the strike, the large media conglomerates that make up the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) have been resolute in their refusal to meet the demands by the WGA around writers’ receipt of residuals (royalties) from online distribution of their work. At present writers receive no residuals for the money generated from online distribution. The WGA is demanding that writers receive 2.5% of all revenue from online distribution.

In response, the AMPTP have offered writers nothing from online streaming and 0.3% for downloads, claiming that they make no money from internet distribution. This claim can be attributed to creative accounting, as according to United Hollywood blog, media conglomerates have told shareholders that they expect to generate in the next two years US$1 billion from downloads and $2 billion from streaming.

The determination of the WGA to win a share of residuals for internet transmission is based on writers experience of the bargaining in the 1980s over residuals from home video. The WGA accepted a low percentage only to see the market explode to the point where DVD sales are worth more than the combined revenue from the box office, TV syndication and international broadcasting rights. Peter Grosz, a writer for The Colbert Report, told Labor Notes in November that “we learned the lesson on DVDs. Producers won the battle 20 years … but we want to win the war.”

Wider significance
While the immediate consequence of the dispute is the income of writers, any gains made will flow on to all workers in the film and television industry. This is of particular importance for film crews, who are not entitled to an individual share of residuals, but whose collective share helps to fund health and other benefits. As a result it is expected that for each cent that writers win as a residual, the companies will pay out 12 cents. It is this knowledge that is driving the AMPTP to bargain hard.

Since the strike began WGA members and supporters have been demonstrating their collective strength. This has included staffing picket lines outside studios, and demonstrations including the mass rally of 4000 outside Fox studios on November 9. Members of other unions in the industry have supported the strike.

The Golden Globes award night on January 13 was scaled down to a press conference after plans by writers to picket the event caused high profile actors, such as Cate Blanchet, George Clooney and Johnny Depp, to stay away rather than cross picket lines. Similar actions are being threatened against the Academy Awards scheduled for February.

Employer Response
AMPTP have attempted to break the confidence of the striking workers, including by launching a negative PR campaign. The most significant attempt to break the strike has been the attempt to keep new shows being produced in order to maintain revenue. This has included a large increase in the number of reality TV shows, however the bulk of the flagship late night talk shows returned on January 2. The majority came back without writers, and largely without stars who have refused to be booked on shows until the writers return. This has reduced the shows to booking each others hosts and such quality entertainment as host Conan O’Brien seeing how long he could make his wedding ring spin.

There were two exceptions — Jay Leno and David Letterman.

Leno, a WGA member, breached the terms of the WGA contract by writing his own material. Letterman, on the other hand, returned with writers after reaching his own agreement with the WGA. Letterman had also continued to pay the shows employees, except the writers, throughout the strike.

There is mounting pressure for a settlement to the dispute. There have now been four side contract deals in addition to that with Letterman’s Worldwide Pants Company. These allow for the development and re-writing of scripts for the production of new films while other companies and studios wait for the strike to be settled. These side arrangements will be superseded by any new contact between the WGA and the AMPTP.

Directors’ Contract
The contract negotiations between the DGA and the AMPTP is seen by media pundits as a significant element in the strike. A quick settlement without an online residuals deal is seen as a potential way in which the position of the WGA could be undermined. The DGA is not seen as being as militant as the WGA, and also residuals are not seen as important to directors.

This is because many of the big name directors sign contracts where the up-front payments are so large residuals are insignificant. These directors are thought to be willing to pass up residuals in favour of larger up-front fee payments, an option the AMPTP would prefer as it would not have the same flow on effect as residual payments. In addition, assistant directors, who make up 40% of the DGA’s membership, have no entitlement to residuals.

While the outcome of DGA contract negotiations will impact on the writers confidence, Grosz told Labor Notes: “This strike is for the future. The internet is too big, too important to buckle on this. What we are asking for is so simple and so fair. If they get paid, we get paid.”

[For more information on the strike visit http://www.unitedhollywood.blogspot.com/ and the WGA’s website.

Originally published in Green Left Weekly #736

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New US spy facility to be built in WA

By Lisbeth Latham

On February 15, PM John Howard's government announced that it had agreed to the construction of a new US spy-satellite ground station at the Kojarena intelligence base 30 kilometres east of Geraldton. The new facility will transmit data to and from two US geostationary spy satellites focused on the Middle East and Asia.

Dr Michael McKinley, senior lecturer in international relations at the Australian National University, told the February 16 West Australian that as the new facility would co-ordinate US military operations in the Middle East and Asia, building it would tie Australia even closer to US foreign policy. Once the facility was built "the Australian government will not be able to withdraw its support for a US military operation, even if it disagrees with it".

The new facility has been opposed by the Greens. WA Greens Senator Rachel Siewert issued a statement on February 14 saying: "Australians are now even more deeply enmeshed in United States military endeavours, whether we agree with them or not. It is a classic John Howard capitulation to US military interests."

The ALP has supported the agreement to build the new facility, with shadow defence minister Joel Fitzgibbon telling journalists on February 14 that, "As a matter of principle, as a matter of national security, Labor supports this proposal". He said that Labor "recognised the importance of the joint facilities to the [US-Australia] alliance and to the defence of Australia".

In May 1999, Martin Brady, then director of the Defence Signals Directorate (DSD) in Canberra, revealed to Channel Nine's Sunday program that the Kojarena communications base was Australia's main contribution to the Echelon global spy system operated by the spy agencies of the US, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

The May 26, 1999 Melbourne Age reported that Brady revealed that under Echelon "millions of messages are automatically intercepted every hour, and checked according to criteria supplied by intelligence agencies and governments in all five UKUSA countries. The intercepted signals are passed through a computer system called the Dictionary, which checks each new message or call against thousands of 'collection' requirements. The Dictionaries then send the messages into the spy agencies' equivalent of the internet, making them accessible all over the world.

"Australia's main contribution to this system is an ultra-modern intelligence base at Kojarena, near Geraldton in Western Australia. The station was built in the early 1990s. At Kojarena, four satellite tracking dishes intercept Indian and Pacific Ocean communications satellites. The exact target of each dish is concealed by placing them inside golfball like 'radomes'.

"About 80% of the messages intercepted at Kojarena are sent automatically from its Dictionary computer to the CIA or the NSA [National Security Agency], without ever being seen or read in Australia. Although it is under Australian command, the station — like its controversial counterpart at Pine Gap — employs American and British staff in key posts."

The February 12, 2002, Sydney Daily Telegraph reported that the DSD had used the Kojarena spy base to intercept private phone calls to the MV Tampa the previous September.

"A government source was reported as saying transcripts of phone conversations were used by the Howard government to formulate a political response after the ship rescued 438 boat people near Christmas Island", the Telegraph reported. "The phone conversations between the International Transport Federation, Maritime Union of Australia and the crew of the Tampa were alleged to have been intercepted after the ship was boarded by Special Air Service troops."

From Green Left Weekly #699.

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Union recognition ballots:The US experience

Lisbeth Latham

Among the proposals included in the Australian Council of Trade Unions’ industrial relations legislation policy, adopted at its October conference, were provisions for unions to be able to hold elections to win recognition in workplaces where the boss refuses to bargain with them. These ballots are aimed at addressing the lack of a mechanism whereby unions can make an employer negotiate a collective agreement for workers. Such ballots have been a feature of the US industrial relations system for over 70 years.


Union recognition ballots were introduced in the US in 1935, in the wake of the mass labour upsurge that began in 1934. Prior to their introduction, employers had traditionally countered organising campaigns though massive repression using private security guards, police and the National Guard. In 1934, thousands of workers in Minnesota, San Francisco, Toledo and across US coalfields fought pitched street battles as part of a series of general strikes that won union recognition and significant improvements in working conditions.

Faced with an increasingly confident working class inspired by these victories, the Roosevelt administration introduced a National Labor Review Board (NLRB) provision for union recognition to blunt the rising-tide of union struggles. In 1947, the Truman administration passed the Taft-Hartley Act, which allowed for derecognition ballots in already-organised workplaces.

During their first 30 years, the ballots played a role in helping the growth of the US union movement. During the post-war boom, US companies were able to afford regular pay rises and improvements in working conditions for the core of unions’ membership in the old industrial heartland of the north-east and mid-west.

In a period of rising profits, capital was happy to negotiate with unions. But the sharp economic crisis in the world economy and the boom’s end saw employers begin an aggressive campaign to strip wages and conditions that unions had won, by actively attempting to keep the US union-free.

NLRB recognition and derecognition elections have become the central mechanism through which US bosses have attempted to keep themselves union-free or rid themselves of a union presence. In the November 5, 2005, In These Times Christopher Hayes wrote that 75% of US employers’ contract outside union-busters to help run their campaigns to defeat ballots. The organisations employ a range of tactics to undermine organising efforts and intimidate workers. These include:

• Shifting known anti-union workers into workplaces that are holding ballots;
• Holding closed meetings where management shows videos about workplaces that have closed - down after being unionised;
• Sacking and/or transferring out known union activists;
• Holding one-on-one interviews with workers to intimidate them into not joining unions.

The most notorious US union-busting company is retail giant Wal-Mart, which circulates guides to its store managers about how to identify and respond to attempts by workers to organise. Wal-Mart’s determination to remain union-free can be seen from its response when workers win ballots in its stores.

In 2000, when butchers in Jacksonville, Texas, voted to join the United Food and Commercial Workers, Wal-Mart responded by announcing that henceforth it would sell only pre-cut meat in all of its supercentres, fired four of the union supporters and transferred the rest into other divisions (the action was ruled illegal by the NLRB three years later). When workers in Quebec successfully organised their store, Wal-Mart closed the entire store.

The impact of these actions has been a decline in recognition ballots. Despite expending millions of dollars on organising new workers — the AFL-CIO union federation alone has an organising budget of US$10 million — in 2002 US unions won 54% of ballots held, with 78,284 joining unions as a consequence of the vote. Eighty-thousand workers — just 0.1% of the US work force — are being organised into unions through ballots each year and only 9% of US workers are members of unions, compared to 500,000-per-year during the 1950s, when 35% of workers were members of unions.

Even more worrying for US unions is that they are less successful in defeating derecognition ballots. This reduced win-rate reflects that winning a recognition ballot does not force the bosses to bargain in good faith, and they are more likely resist a union’s attempt to secure a contract when they know that they can use the failure to help push the union out in a subsequent ballot. According to the AFL-CIO, unions secure a collective agreement in less than two-thirds of workplaces after a successful recognition ballot.

A sharp rise in labour-practice violations by US bosses has been associated with limited penalties for companies found guilty of violating workers’ rights. While having stronger penalties could reduce the likelihood that employers will attempt to intimidate workers (depending on the cost of fines compared to that of having a unionised work force for employers), the penalties would be permanently under threat. Additionally, this builds reliance on courts to protect workers’ rights — rather than building unions’ strength and capacity to defend workers — undermining the confidence of workers to take on the boss and organise.

In industries with high employment turnovers, any delay on a ballot, such as court action around violations by employers, can help undermine unionising drives, so that even when unions win court cases to defend workers’ rights they lose the ballot.

Although winning union recognition is an important step in building a union, on its own it doesn’t build an organisation able to consistently win contracts. Getting people to vote in a recognition ballot is different to getting them to participate in an industrial campaign to win a contract, which can turn into a war of attrition between workers on the one hand and the boss on the other.

In the US, some of the most successful organising campaigns have bypassed the ballot process entirely, such as the Justice for Janitors campaign. Similar to the strategy followed in the Australian construction industry by the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, this focused not only on mobilising members and supporters to place maximum pressure on employers. It also sought to shift the focus of the campaign from subcontractors who employ janitors, who have extremely tight profit margins and are more difficult to win contracts from. Instead, Justice for Janitors has targeted the larger companies, such as hotels and resorts, to force them to pay more to subcontractors and to only contract unionised subcontractors.

Union recognition ballots undermine the democratic right of workers to be members of unions, as they remove the right of individual workers to join a union and be represented by it. Any call for union-recognition ballots by the labour movement reflects a significant retreat from the right of unions to represent workers wherever they have members.

Originally published in Green Left Weekly #692

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'Operational Reasons': The New Excuse for Sackings

Lisbeth Latham

Less than a week after Work Choices came into effect on March 27, the Cowra Abattoir in NSW hit the headlines when it announced plans to sack 29 workers and re-hire 20 on worse conditions and with a $200 pay cut.


PM John Howard rushed to defend the abattoir management, telling parliament on March 31: “To suggest that when a firm is operating uneconomically that it has no right to alter the structure of its work force ... with the inevitable consequence that the firm is going to go out of business, defies rationality.”

Media attention forced management to withdraw the workers’ termination notices in early April, and the Howard government asked the new Office of Workplace Services to determine whether the sackings were legal. Predictably, it found that the primary reason for the sackings was to return the company to profitability, not to shift workers from a collective to an individual agreement with worse conditions.

Before Work Choices, workers were protected by unfair dismissal laws that prohibited workers being sacked and re-hired on lower pay. Section 792 (4) of Work Choices makes these protections available only where it can be proven that the “sole” or “dominant” reason for a dismissal was that the worker was entitled to certain pay and conditions under an industrial award or agreement. Clause 643 (8) of the new law introduces protection for big businesses against any unfair dismissal claim when a worker is sacked for so-called “operational reasons”.

Who decides when sackings are for “operational purposes”? The US multinational Enron posted profits of US$140 billion just nine months before it declared bankruptcy on December 2, 2001. Similarly, any company prepared to doctor its books can make itself appear unprofitable if it means real profits can be increased by slashing employees’ wages and conditions.

Howard said that Cowra Abattoir management’s letter to workers in February saying that it was in financial difficulties shows that the job cuts were for “operational purposes”. But the boss crying poor can be just an excuse, as Leigh Vanroon’s experience shows.

Vanroon, a Queensland print worker, was sacked after he approached his union regarding his work roster. According to the June 16 Age, despite Vanroon’s willingness to work the new hours, which would have lost him $160 a week, when he told his manager that the roster change needed to be inserted into his contract, the manager told him to “fuck off”.

Management then sent Vanroon a letter informing him that he had been sacked for “operational reasons”. Vanroon told the Age, “Up until that point in time, I thought my job was safe. I was a good operator. I’d been promoted to shift supervisor so they obviously thought I was a valuable employee. And in 24 hours I was out the door.”

In Vanroon’s case, “operational reasons” was a thinly veiled excuse for his termination that was used to deny him access to unfair dismissal provisions.

If a company is not profitable, why should workers suffer the consequences, given that they do not generally receive the benefit when large profits are made? If workers accept pay cuts to help rebuild the company’s profitability, there is no guarantee that their conditions will improve when profit margins rise.

This was the experience of workers in the US auto-parts company Delphi, which declared bankruptcy in October 2005 and sought to sack two-thirds of its 33,000-strong work force and reduce by 65% the hourly wages of those who remained. At the same time, Delphi CEO Steve Miller promised to pay US$500 million in bonuses to senior managers if the company was made profitable again. He didn’t promise a better deal to the rest of the company’s work force.
We can expect to hear a lot more of the “operational reasons” excuse for unfair sackings under the new industrial relations regime — another reason why workers and our unions need a concerted political and industrial campaign to overturn Work Choices entirely.

Originally published in Green Left Weekly #673

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