Actors, ad reps gain no ground with feds' help

The Hollywood Reporter - June 14, 2000

By David Robb

LOS ANGELES --- Any hope for a quick end to the 6-week-old actors strike against the ad industry evaporated Tuesday when federal mediators failed to convince either side to compromise their hardened bargaining positions.

Federal mediators had called the sides together for the first time since contract talks broke off two months ago, but after an all-day session of shuttle diplomacy, the mediators concluded that there was no reason to meet again today because neither side showed any sign of flexibility.

If either side had shown any willingness to budge, the mediators would have called both sides back to the bargaining table for the resumption of formal negotiations. As it turned out, neither side would give an inch.

"I've said before that we weren't going to get anywhere unless they budged," AFTRA president Shelby Scott said. "I'm disappointed they didn't budge."

SAG spokesman Greg Krizman said the talks, which were held at the offices of the Federal Mediation & Conciliation Service in New York, were "scheduled for two days, but it was called off after the first day. Evidently, there was not sufficient movement to warrant a second day. We'll see where this takes us."

Union and industry reps didn't even meet in the same room Tuesday. Instead, federal mediators shuttled from one room to another, asking each side "what if ... " questions to see if either side would move a little if the other side would give a little.

The main issue in the strike is residuals, and on that issue there appears to be no room for compromise -- at least, not yet.

The ad industry is demanding the unions give up pay-per-play residuals, which pay actors every time their commercials air on network TV. Instead, the advertisers want to pay residuals on a flat rate, just as residuals are now paid for commercials shown on basic cable TV.

The unions are going in exactly the opposite direction. They want to keep pay-per-play for network commercials and extend them to cable commercials.

The unions insist they will never give up pay-per-play residuals and that the industry's "roll-back" demands are a "nonstarter" for contract talks.

Union and industry reps couldn't even agree Tuesday on whether two days of meetings or one had been scheduled this week.

Ira Shepard, counsel for the Joint Policy Committee of the Association of National Advertisers and the American Association of Advertising Agencies, said there was only one day scheduled.

"From our perspective, there never was (a second day) scheduled," he said. "We met for a full day separately with the mediators. The sessions were businesslike. The mediators released the parties at the end of the day, subject to a call back at a future time. I think the mediators are digesting what they heard from us and the unions. It was a hard-working day of mediation."

Shepard, however, was a little more upbeat about Tuesday's mediation session than were union reps.

"There is no magic solution," he said. "When people get together for a day with the mediators, that's a positive thing."

On Tuesday, before the mediation session failed to produce any movement, more than 1,000 wildly enthusiastic actors rallied at the Los Angeles offices of SAG and AFTRA.

Chanting "We will win" and "We won't back down," the fervent crowd heard numerous celebrities pledge their support to the unions' bargaining positions.

Among the stars who spoke to the strikers were Richard Dreyfuss, Tony Danza, Alfre Woodard, Buddy Hackett, Billy Baldwin, Noah Wyle, Amy Brenneman, Tyne Daly, Valerie Harper, Elliott Gould, Steve Allen, Carroll Baker, Shari Belafonte, Sally Kirkland, Harry Hamlin and Joe Pantoliano.

Actress Bonnie Bartlett told the crowd that her husband, SAG president William Daniels, who was in New York for Tuesday's meeting with federal mediators, had not expected much to come out of the mediation session.

"He's not too hopeful," she said, "because the advertisers did not call this meeting; it was the mediators. However, they're there; they're trying."

Several stars spoke of the need for solidarity among all actors -- not just commercial actors -- during the strike because an actors strike against the film and TV industry may be just around the corner. The unions' film and TV contract expires July 1, 2001, and many of the same residuals issues that are at the heart of the commercials strike are expected to play a major role in next year's negotiations for a new film and TV contract.

Actress Frances Fisher told the cheering crowd that "if the ad industry is able to force rollbacks in this contract, you better believe that the motion picture and television producers, who are watching this strike, are waiting in the wings to do the same thing to us next year."

Richard Dreyfuss said the advertising industry is "offering us a pay cut, and they are waiting to see our ranks weaken. If we weaken now, they (the film producers) expect us to weaken next year."

Actress Barbara Bosson told strikers that the strike is "setting the tone of what's to come."

She noted that the unions will be dealing with the same employers next year that they are dealing with now. "We sit across the negotiating table from Seagram, who owns Universal; from G.E. who owns NBC," she said.

"I am absolutely here in solidarity with everybody in this union," Amy Brenneman ("Judging Amy") said. "I am also here because I know that they are going to come after every single residual on the planet come next year. And so people who think that this is only about commercial actors, they are very wrong."

"We have to stand together and we have to tame this greedy monster out there that the advertisers have become, because if we don't now, they're going to start gobbling us up, and next year and the year after, they're gonna eat us until we are gone," Harry Hamlin said.

Joe Pantoliano said the strike "is about union busting."

"They want to break our home," he said. "They want to ruin us just like they ruined all the unions."

Alfre Woodard said the actors' unions are striking not only for actors, but for all working men and women.

The strike, she said, "goes far beyond" a dispute between actors and advertisers. "There has been systematic union-busting across this nation. We need to stand, not just for ourselves and our unions, but we have to stand for the American worker because we are one of the few unions left with any solidarity."

Todd Amorde, the chairman of the unions' strike committee, told the cheering crowd that if mediation fails, "we intend to escalate," and warned advertisers that the unions' members "are ready to hold out for as long as it takes."

Now that mediation has failed, that could be a long, long time.


Copyright © 2000 The Hollywood Reporter. All rights reserved.