AMPTP Makes Final Offer to SAG

The AMPTP just made a final offer to SAG. I'm advised by a AMPTP spokesman that this offer tracks the AFTRA and DGA/WGA deals in terms of minimums, new media, and other provisions. On force majeure (an actors-only issue), the AMPTP offer holds to the AMPTP's previous position that the existing contract language should be revised.

The AMPTP spokesman confirms that this is a "last, best, and final offer" in legal terms. Such an offer would allow the AMPTP to impose the offer's terms once the SAG agreement expires tonight. However, as the AMPTP press release says, "As SAG's leadership considers our final offer, we will continue for now to work under the terms of the old contract as current productions wind down."

The AMPTP has offered to meet with SAG on Wednesday afternoon to explain the offer, but states that it will not entertain counter-offers.

Marxism in Hollywood

Another day, another denunciation. It's hard to know what the SAG Hollywood leadership is thinking. They’ve deployed robocalls, trade ads, emails, and more, in a misguided effort to defeat the AFTRA deal. Success is unlikely, but in any case, the result will probably be continued labor paralysis, not progress. After all, AFTRA is not going to strike, nor negotiate jointly with SAG, no matter what the outcome of the ratification vote.

For its part, SAG’s also unlikely to strike, since a 75% affirmative vote is required for strike authorization. What's more, we're nowhere near a strike, since the balloting process would apparently take three weeks, and hasn't even been initiated. The guild’s own New York, Chicago and San Francisco branches won’t support a strike – and have criticized the anti-AFTRA strategy – and even SAG’s allies at the WGA have been largely silent.

Meanwhile, the guild’s negotiations with the studios drag on interminably, with little evident progress. The contract expires Monday night, but that doesn’t seem to have heightened the urgency particularly. It's hard to tell whether SAG even has a strategy, or is simply stuck in a morass of overpromised goals and anti-AFTRA animus, mixed in with valid points (force majeure, clip minimums, some aspects of product integration) that might be more achievable were there a greater sense of realism in the rhetoric and tactics.

As we undergo a second Hollywood labor stoppage in less than a year, some explanation, although little comfort, is provided by Karl Marx, once considered a patron saint of the labor movement. Expanding on a remark by Hegel, Marx posited that history repeats itself: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce. This year seems proof of that. One can only hope that twice is the limit, since the SAG commercials contract expires this fall, in case you’d mistakenly thought we were anywhere near done with labor unrest.

Of course, when it comes to legal analysis, Karl is not the most authoritative Marx in a capitalist society. For that – and particularly in Hollywood – we turn to Groucho and Chico. In 1935’s A Night at the Opera, Groucho describes a contract provision that he refers to as a “sanity clause.” Chico is unpersuaded: “You can't fool me,” he says, “there ain't no Sanity Claus.”

If only there were. Rationality has been in short supply the last twelve months. The Writers Guild and the studios both seemed hell-bent on a strike, and outside voices did little to deter or shorten the experience. A federal mediator had no effect, and even the head of CAA was unable to broker a deal. Only a confluence of circumstances – including the impending destruction of the Oscars – was enough to end the stalemate. Nothing like a busted awards ceremony to get Hollywood’s attention.

Unfortunately, no obvious or immediate deadlines loom this time. Now, as then, some have called on the Governor to intervene, and his experience as both a Terminator and a kindergarten cop would make him well-suited to the task. But there’s little upside, and plenty of risk, to the governor in getting involved in a parochial Hollywood dispute, no matter the economic impact. Instead, we seem destined to a war of attrition, as SAG, AFTRA and the studios all jockey for advantage with feature production stalled and television work uncertain. Stay tuned – if you can stand it.

Curtain Call

“We are not done yet!” shouted Screen Actors Guild leader Doug Allen three times at the guild’s anti-AFTRA rally last week. Evidently not, but Hollywood is beyond well-done and beginning to burn. It’s time for SAG to put its full efforts into crafting the best deal it can get, rather than try to derail the AFTRA primetime deal.

Why? Several reasons. For one thing, attempting to defeat the AFTRA deal is a futile exercise. The members of AFTRA – the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, SAG’s smaller rival – approved a similar daytime deal by an affirmative vote of 93% of those voting. It’s almost impossible to believe that SAG can cut that percentage to 49% – i.e., virtually in half – which is what would be necessary to nullify the deal.

For another thing, even if the incredible were to happen, SAG’s stated goal of persuading AFTRA to then return to the bargaining table jointly with SAG is Pollyannaish. There’s little but bad blood between the unions at this point. Indeed, given that SAG and AFTRA are both headquartered in the same office building, it’s hard to imagine what shared elevator rides must be like. Do people retreat to opposite corners like cold-war prizefighters, or do they simply turn their backs on each other?

The other reason that SAG’s mission in quixotic at best is that some (though not all) of the positions it’s taking are just non-starters. For instance, on clip consent – the issue of whether actors should have the right to veto studios’ online use of excerpts from movie and TV shows – SAG is taking positions at odds with the AFTRA deal and even with what SAG itself apparently originally proposed. That’s a quick road to nowhere.

Another example: SAG is seeking revisions in the new media template already enshrined in the Directors Guild, WGA, AFTRA daytime, and AFTRA primetime deals. That’s largely an uphill battle. SAG’s also not going to get any improvement in the DVD residual, no matter how fair such an increase may be (and I do think an increase would be fair). That’s another pointless venture: None of those four earlier deals contains a DVD increase, and it’s a fair bet that IATSE (representing technical and craft workers) won’t be looking for one either when it recommences its negotiations.

That makes five other contracts that don’t or won’t have an increase. With SAG in last position among the above the line unions (i.e., all but IATSE), it has virtually no leverage to revise the 24 year-old deal that established what the WGA called “the hated DVD formula.” Ironically, SAG put itself in this position. It could have negotiated jointly with AFTRA were it not for a series of decisions that angered the smaller union and gave it an excuse to sever a 1981 joint bargaining agreement. And even after that arrangement collapsed, SAG could have had an extended period of negotiations prior to AFTRA entering the field, had the guild not refused for weeks to set a date to start negotiations. AFTRA’s, and management’s, reactions should have been easy to predict. SAG overplayed a weak hand, allowing management to play one union off against the other, and now the guild finds itself buried under a landslide of precedent.

That’s unfortunate, because the probable result is that SAG will still be sidelined in negotiations – or maybe on the picket lines – while AFTRA begins signing up new TV shows starting sometime after July 7, the date that ratification ballots are due back from the membership. No doubt the smaller union will be vigorous in seeking new signatories and enlarging its reach. After all, AFTRA didn’t negotiate its deal simply to put it up on a shelf and admire it. A weakened SAG will be the consequence. Already, SAG’s own leadership is bitterly divided on tactics and on the inter-union rivalry.

More regrettable is what SAG’s maneuvers are doing to the industry. Feature production is already down significantly, and that trend will only get worse once the SAG deal expires. Whether or not SAG strikes, the town will enter a near-complete work stoppage come June 30. That’s a blow the battered industry and depressed local economy can ill-afford. Let’s be done with labor negotiations, at least until the guild’s commercials contract comes up for renewal this fall, when new media will once again be likely to present difficult challenges and frustrate all concerned. It’s time for SAG to finish its scene, take a graceful bow, and depart the stage.

Quarterlife Less Than One Percent Life

We already knew that the underperforming Quarterlife didn't get a quarter of anything on NBC, but here's how poorly it performed online: of Myspace's 140 million members, there were only 140,000 views of the show, per creator Marshall Herskovitz, speaking yesterday at iHollywood Forum's Digital Media Summit in LA.

That number's only a tenth of 1% of the Myspace membership - and even that may be an overestimate of the number of viewers, since the 140,000 refers to viewings of the show, not viewers, if I understood Herskovitz properly. Since the show online was actually many segments, the number of of viewers is probably far smaller.

Maybe the show didn't get enough ad support to drive viewers? Nope. According to Herskovitz, the show was supported by a hefty one billion ad impressions.

Herskovitz opened the kimono on a few more details: The producers didn't make much from Myspace, not surprisingly. The biggest online advertiser was Toyota, which paid $500,000 for advertising. (Not clear to me if all that money went to the producers, or if Myspace got a piece.) Another significant source of revenue was a product integration deal with a music website that Pepsi had invested in.

SAG Shreds AFTRA's Contract

Variety and the Hollywood Reporter are reporting that SAG chief Alan Rosenberg, National Exec Director Doug Allan, and the activist Membership First faction are pushing to have SAG come out against the AFTRA deal and urge dual cardholders (members of both unions) to vote against the deal.

What a mess. If the unions had merged -- or continued to bargain jointly under the Phase 1 arrangement -- we wouldn't have this turmoil. SAG hasn't made a terribly convincing case that the AFTRA deal is so subpar that it deserves to be rejected, although certainly we can hope that SAG would achieve progress on compensation for product integration, an area in which AFTRA achieved nothing.

We'll listen closely to whatever rationale SAG offers, but it's hard to believe that any deficiencies in the AFTRA deal are so bad as to warrant rejection -- all deals are compromises -- let alone a strike or other type of work stoppage. The industry has been battered and bruised too much this year, and walking off a cliff is only going to hurt everyone in the long run, or even the short run.

With One Union Already Done, SAG Auditions for an Actors Deal

One actors union has just done its deal with the studios, and now its larger rival, the Screen Actors Guild, is back at the bargaining table. Is a SAG deal imminent? Not likely. Instead, we may be sliding toward another Hollywood work stoppage.

The signs aren’t good. Already, SAG has given a chilly response to the deal reached last week by the American Federation of Television & Radio Artists. A key source of contention is clip consent, the issue of whether studios need an actor’s permission in order to make short excerpts of movies and TV shows available online or via cell phones. SAG wants to preserve actors’ control over their own images, but the veto right SAG seeks is unrealistic in an era of Internet piracy, fan sites, mash-ups and morphing. Understandably, AFTRA all but passed on the issue, although the union’s spin might suggest otherwise.

SAG is also unhappy that AFTRA didn’t achieve increases in home video residuals, the reuse fees that actors receive when DVDs are sold. But AFTRA’s not alone. In their most recent deals, the writers didn’t achieve those increases either, and the directors apparently didn’t even raise the issue. It’s not easy to renegotiate a 24-year-old formula. SAG is right – the fees are unfairly low – but with no leverage left, the guild will have to abandon the issue sooner or later. Better to do so sooner and move the negotiations forward.

New media is another big issue. The AFTRA deal follows the template set by the directors and writers. SAG’s not happy with that either, but it’s unreasonable to expect significant changes to what’s become an industry-wide standard. Yet another key issue is product integration – scenes in movies or TV shows in which a character extols the virtues of a particular product. SAG wants compensation for these embedded commercials, and wants a veto right over them as well. A veto is not practical – studios need the fees that product manufacturers pay – but compensation is eminently reasonable. AFTRA achieved neither a veto nor compensation.

The AFTRA deal sounds like all sour and no sweet, but that’s not quite true. In particular, the new agreement increases minimum compensation levels by a healthy margin. That benefits middle-class actors, a key goal for SAG.

What now? True leadership means knowing which cards to hold and which to fold. SAG should focus on obtaining compensation for product integration – and the studios should give on this issue – but the guild will have to pass on the other major items. There’s a tough lesson here for SAG: by pushing too hard in an inter-union rivalry, the guild gave its smaller competitor an excuse to bargain separately with the studios for the first time in 27 years. That allowed management to play one union off against the other, and actors pay the price.

Unfortunately, SAG seems unyielding, and its leadership appears convinced that bargaining down to the wire is the best strategy. The SAG contract expires June 30, but the AFTRA deal will probably be ratified by union membership just days before that, creating additional pressure on SAG in the bargaining room. And, once the deal is approved, AFTRA will start signing up new television shows while SAG is still sidelined in negotiations. Yet even that may not be enough to convince SAG to close a deal quickly. Management, in turn, is unlikely to compromise much on issues already negotiated with AFTRA.

This may sound like a recipe for a strike, but it’s not. That’s because SAG rules require a 75 percent membership vote to authorize a strike, a potentially difficult threshold to meet. SAG leadership probably won’t even seek the authorization, in part for that reason, and also because the New York and regional factions of SAG leadership don’t even want a strike at all. (Those non-Hollywood factions are more aligned ideologically with AFTRA than with SAG’s dominant Hollywood leadership.)

No strike, yet no deal, means SAG might offer to continue working under the expired contract. Management is unlikely to agree, for fear that SAG could walk out while expensive movies or TV series are in the middle of production. Instead, the studios will probably choose not resume production of feature films, or of nighttime TV shows other than those few covered by AFTRA. (Daytime shows are covered by a separate AFTRA agreement, on which a deal was reached two months ago.)

A work stoppage at management’s election is a lockout, not a strike, but the effect is much the same: an industry idled – for the second time in less than a year – and another blow to the local economy, already made soft by subprime shenanigans. Los Angeles can ill afford the hit, especially in the face of competition from the non-unionized entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. Actors are known to ask “What’s my character’s motivation?” when studying a new script. Let’s hope avoiding another work stoppage is motivation enough for both SAG and the studios.

Acting Up

CANNES, France – Do loose clips sink ships? Apparently the actors think so. Their ongoing union negotiations with the studios are hung up over clip consent – the issue of whether studios can use short excerpts from movies and TV shows without an actor’s permission. In particular, the question is whether actors should have a veto right when the studios make clips available online or via cell phones.

The issue is arcane, like so much that’s recently bedeviled Hollywood labor. Studios say that seeking consent from every actor in every clip is uneconomical, which would mean no clip revenue for either side (although significant digital revenue is years away in any case). It’s a compelling argument.

Actors respond that they want to control their own images and avoid being overexposed, let alone mashed-up and morphed. That also sounds sensible – until you consider the tens of thousands of clips already available online illegally. Neither the actors nor the studios can control those clips, or pretty much anything else on the Internet. That horse left the barn several years ago, yet management and labor are still arguing over whether to ride English or Western.

There are other major issues in the negotiations as well: Should actors get a bigger piece of DVD revenue? Yes, but they probably won’t, because the writers and directors already passed on the issue, leaving the actors with little leverage. What about union jurisdiction over low-budget new media production? The parties should adopt the nuanced deal agreed to by the directors and writers. Product integration? Force majeure? The former is a type of product placement on steroids, and the latter’s scarcely worth explaining, although it’s not without economic impact; the actors should yield on the first, the studios on the second.

On and on it goes, with mind-numbing complexity. Further confusing matters is a tussle between the two major actors unions, the Screen Actors Guild and the smaller American Federation of Television & Radio Artists. SAG and AFTRA used to negotiate jointly with the studios, but a bitter split led to negotiations this year in alternating bouts: a few weeks of discussions between the studios and SAG, then a few weeks between the studios and AFTRA, then back to SAG again. It’s like a French farce, with doors slamming as parties enter and exit the negotiating room.

Granted, these are complicated talks. Digital media is clouded with uncertainty, subsidiary issues abound, and the contract being amended runs to hundreds of pages. Yet, a sense of perspective seems nowhere in evidence. As the June 30 contract expiration approaches, we slide closer to a second possible work stoppage in the entertainment industry within a year. That could take the form of a lockout – a studio refusal to continue or restart production during labor uncertainty – rather than a strike, which would require a 75 percent affirmative vote, for SAG at least. Even now, feature film production has all but ceased in anticipation of the contract expiration.

If this seems dysfunctional, it is. Hollywood labor is a machine with an enormous number of moving parts, none of them well-oiled. In addition to conflict between SAG and AFTRA, there is disagreement within SAG as well, on geographic lines. Several of the unions are riven by internal strife on class lines also, and most of the unions are at odds with each other, notwithstanding some overlapping membership. Meanwhile, the studio alliance whose only responsibility is to make labor deals was unable to do so this year with either the writers or directors. Instead, several studio chiefs had to be called in to do the job, which will probably be the case with the actors as well.

While the industry endures dissension, strikes and lockouts, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, none of them unionized, enjoy snacking on Hollywood’s bacon. They’re growing – and gloating – while Hollywood’s slowing. That’s not good news for Los Angeles. In addition, Hollywood is hurt by depression in the global film business, evident in diminished activity here in Cannes at the film market that accompanies the film festival. On the heels of the recent Writers Guild strike, the Los Angeles economy can ill-afford another multi-billion dollar hit.

What to do? It’s time to close the deal, first with SAG, whose productions are more affected than AFTRA’s. Let’s get the studio chiefs back in the room, then hope for rational, mutual self-interest from both sides. The SAG deal would lead to a quick conclusion with AFTRA as well, and the whole industry could get back to the hard work of making light entertainment – and of sustaining the local economy.

First published in the Los Angeles Business Journal.

Workers of the World, Unite -- and Strike

Call it poetic (in)justice. After months of analyzing Hollywood's labor troubles, I took a sojourn to Cannes to enjoy the film festival and do a little business. Now it looks like I may have to involuntarily extend my stay. The culprit: a French transportation strike that's been occurring intermittently for the past few days. Lovely.

Spinning the Web - Seminar at the WGA

Interested in writing original scripted content -- web series -- for the Internet? If so, come to Spinning the Web, a seminar on June 21 at the WGA, sponsored by the Writers Guild Foundation. It's an all-day affair with a host of speakers (including me). There is a registration fee.

Hollywood Actors – What Now?

The Screen Actors Guild primetime and film contract talks collapsed Tuesday, and the next day, the American Federation of Television & Radio Artists began their own primetime TV talks with the studios, raising fears of a SAG strike and heightened inter-union strife between SAG and AFTRA.

The talks between SAG and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) – the studios – were less nasty than the WGA talks, but no less contentious. SAG had several goals:

• Improvements in new media, above and beyond the DGA and WGA deals.
• Doubling the DVD residual – which would be a renegotiation of a 24-year old deal, albeit one quite unfavorable to talent. SAG later revised this to a proposal that DVD residuals be subject to pension, health and welfare contributions, which would amount to a 15% increase.
• Requiring the studios to obtain actors’ consent for reuse of movies and TV shows in new media, particularly in the form of clips. The studios don’t want existing consent requirements from traditional media to apply to new media. This has proved to be an area of great disagreement.
• Increased compensation for middle-class actors – i.e., actors who regularly work but are not stars. SAG’s backed off on some of these demands.
• Compensation for “forced endorsements” – i.e., product integration (product placement on steroids, so to speak), in which the actor is, for example, required to handle or extol the benefits of a product while in character, as part of a scene in a movie or TV show. It’s not clear whether SAG has compromised or even abandoned this demand.

Management has resisted these demands, and the talks, although extended twice, apparently resulted in little progress. In part this may be because SAG seriously underestimated its own vulnerability. For the last 27 years, SAG and AFTRA had jointly negotiated the primetime and film contract with the AMPTP, under an arrangement called Phase 1. However, of late, SAG’s Hollywood leadership became increasingly disenchanted by AFTRA’s 50% representation on the negotiating committee, in light of the fact that AFTRA represents no films and almost no primetime TV shows.

Nettled by the mismatch, SAG Hollywood tried through various proposals and procedures to reduce AFTRA’s influence. This angered not only AFTRA, but also SAG’s New York and regional branches, which, with AFTRA, tend to be more moderate than SAG Hollywood. The final straw for AFTRA was an alleged incident of inter-union poaching by SAG – a purported attempt to decertify AFTRA’s representation of a soap opera (an area of previously unquestioned AFTRA jurisdiction) and replace it with SAG.

Thus, AFTRA ended Phase 1 and elected to go it alone in negotiations. This undercut SAG’s leverage enormously, since AFTRA is expected to take a more moderate approach to the issues than SAG. Rather plaintively, SAG leadership has asked AFTRA to rejoin it at the bargaining table – most recently, in just the last several days, after talks collapsed. AFTRA’s rejected that out of hand, twice.

Now what? AFTRA and the AMPTP are talking, and will probably reach a deal in 2-3 weeks. That’s roughly how long it took AFTRA to reach agreement on its Network Code covering daytime programming. Indeed, the AMPTP has told SAG that it is willing to resume talks at the end of May – i.e., after an AFTRA deal is reached.

Now we face an odd spectacle: the actor’s union that represents no features and almost no primetime TV will set the template for the much larger union whose primary focus is exactly those areas. As a result, SAG will then find itself in an almost untenable position, and one that’s even worse than what the WGA faced even after the DGA did its deal. At least the WGA still had some leverage: namely, the threat to destroy the Oscars (as it had done to the Globes) and the prospect of joining SAG on strike after June 30. SAG, in contrast, finds itself the caboose: all of the other unions have done their deals, or will do so without rancor.

Thus, on new media, for instance, SAG will try to seek improvements over a deal that has, or will have, been agreed to by the DGA, WGA, AFTRA (in its daytime agreement), AFTRA again (in the primetime agreement), and, it appears, by the IA (the representatives of below-the-line workers … the IA has publicly expressed support for the DGA new media deal, but has not yet negotiated its own contract incorporating those terms). That’s an almost vertical fight.

On DVD residuals, same story. None of those other unions achieved an increase in DVD residuals – only the WGA even attempted the feat – and AFTRA’s not expected to do so in its primetime negotiations either. Although SAG has a good argument on the merits for some increase, as a practical matter, it’s a complete nonstarter.

The various other issues above are pretty much unique to actors, so there’s no weight of precedent established by the DGA, WGA or IA. But AFTRA’s setting that precedent right now in its talks, while SAG is sidelined. We can hope that AFTRA seeks and achieves a deal that SAG can, and does, accept without many changes, just as the DGA did with respect to the WGA. Unfortunately, AFTRA has little to gain by bargaining on SAG’s behalf, because they’re at war with SAG, whereas the DGA’s and WGA’s interests were somewhat aligned (since the WGA strike idled directors as well).

What will SAG do? If, or when, it returns to talks, its leverage will be even closer to zero. On the table will be a copy of the AFTRA agreement and a yellow sticky note that says “sign here.” Further talks will likely go nowhere unless SAG yields on most points.

If talks stall, as is likely, the assertive approach would be to take a strike authorization vote, in which the union leadership asks the members to allow the leadership to call a strike at any time after contract expiration, June 30. But there are risks to SAG Hollywood leadership in calling for a strike authorization vote. For instance, the other SAG leadership (New York and regional) will probably vote against such a call, signaling a divided union.

However, it’s likely that SAG Hollywood would succeed in passing a resolution calling for a strike vote, if it called for one, since SAG Hollywood is a majority of the SAG National Board. Then the action would shift to the membership. There, the minimum threshold for approval is 75%, and SAG Hollywood leadership may fall short, because the union is sharply divided regionally, and because it will be hard to convince members that a deal that’s good enough for the DGA, WGA, IA, and AFTRA is nonetheless so bad for SAG that it’s worth a strike – indeed, a second strike, coming just months after the WGA’s.

On the other hand, SAG might well achieve a 75% vote. An enormous percentage of SAG members don’t work even a day a year as actors – I spent more time in Tokyo last year and still scarcely had time for sushi – and so they are probably more likely to vote for a strike authorization than working actors. A strike wouldn’t affect non-working actors greatly, since they’re already not working, but working actors (and directors, writers, crew members, industry suppliers, and others in the LA economy) would suffer greatly.

Some interesting numbers from five years ago: in 2002, SAG members voted on whether to approve a new contract between SAG and talent agents. The contract was voted down, 55% to 45%. The Association of Talent Agents claims that 75%-80% of SAG members voting on the agreement made less than $2,000 the previous year. See http://www.agentassociation.com/frontdoor/news_detail.cfm?id=43 (4/26/02 entry). 55% is a majority – but it’s a lot less than 75%. That suggests that achieving 75% may be difficult, especially since a strike is a more serious matter than failure to reach an agreement with agents.

That agreement with agents was never ratified, by the way, and, to this day – six years later – SAG members are without the protection of an agreement between the union and the agents, although they (SAG members) do continue to be represented by agents, of course.

However, even if a strike authorization passed, a mere 75% is not enough in practical terms. Achieving a bare 75%-80% would underscore the divisions in SAG, and raise questions as to how much support there would be for a strike.

In any case, there are risks to an actual strike, as well. With SAG on the picket lines, AFTRA would be free to organize new TV shows without competition from SAG, and would likely do so aggressively. As a nuclear option, AFTRA might even seek to decertify SAG shows and replace SAG as representative, although this process apparently takes months or more. Another possibility, even more unlikely, is that AFTRA might start organizing feature films, at least those shot on DV (since tape is historically an area of AFTRA jurisdiction).

Also, a strike would put the 44,000 dual cardholders – actors who are members of both unions, and who comprise over one-half of AFTRA membership and almost one-third of SAG – in a very difficult position, working one day, then picketing the next, and perhaps urged by SAG Hollywood leadership not to work at all. AFTRA, and the other branches of SAG, would send the opposite message, presumably. There might be little solidarity, and some actors would probably go financial core, allowing them to cross picket lines (and while continuing to receive most benefits of union membership) or work non-union, all without fear of punishment from the union.

So, if renewed SAG-AMPTP talks prove unproductive, yet SAG Hollywood leadership has reasons to avoid a strike authorization vote, let alone an actual strike, what’s left? One possibility is that SAG will not take a strike authorization vote and will, instead, offer to continue to work without a contract, post-June 30. That might have support from much of SAG leadership: SAG New York and SAG regional because they’re opposed to a strike, and SAG Hollywood because they’re uncertain of achieving ratification of strike authorization vote.

This would be roughly analogous (factually, although not legally) to the situation between SAG and the talent agents noted above. However, there’s a key difference: under federal labor law, the terms of the existing SAG-AMPTP agreement would continue to apply, pretty much unchanged, even after it had expired. (That’s not the way contracts usually work in the non-labor world, of course.)

This development would leave a cloud of uncertainty hanging over the industry. Studio feature production, which halted several weeks ago, would not resume, because the threat of a strike at any time would make movies unbondable and unfinanceable. One ray of light: true independent features – those with no studio financing or distribution deals – would continue to be produced, under interim agreements called guaranteed completion contracts. SAG’s issued 95 of those already.

Television production would probably not resume either; even though the production cycle for any given episode of a show is short, the risk of a truncated season is too great. Thus, although SAG might offer to work, management would probably be unwilling to resume production.

That sounds like a de facto lockout. SAG might file an Unfair Labor Practices complaint with the National Labor relations Board, but management’s response would be that resuming production is not feasible without some guarantee against a walkout mid-show. In any case, ULP’s take months to resolve. Talks would probably continue fitfully, but progress would be slow. A de facto lockout might continue for months, until someone finally blinked. Just such a lockout occurred at an opera company in New York in 1983. It continued for 2-1/2 months.

I hope this isn’t where we’re heading. The industry can ill-afford a second full-blown, extended work stoppage this year, whether from a strike, a lockout, or some ill-defined hybrid. But that may be just what we’ll get – or continue to get, since a de facto lockout’s already started in features. Stay tuned.