AFTRA: Deal "May Not Be Quick or Easy"

Last week, when it was announced SAG would go back to the table with the AMPTP, logic dictated a settlement on a new network primetime TV deal between AFTRA and the producers was within sight. However, an email today from AFTRA National President Roberta Reardon to union members indicated otherwise: "We're confronting a number of challenging issues, and a resolution may not be quick or easy."

There hasn't been much headway on the-clips-of-existing-material-on-the-Internet issue either: "We've already delivered a strong message that performers will not relinquish consent for excerpts in New Media... The Negotiating Committee is also mindful of the hard realities affecting the television business today... and the impact this has on the wages and job opportunities for working performers... Given the rapid changes happening around us, we cannot afford to waste time chasing rainbows. Our obligations to AFTRA members [require] us to be focused, firm, and solutions-minded in order to effectively ensure that working performers have a fair and realistic chance to participate in the future of the television industry."

In her letter, Reardon singled out for praise individual members of AFTRA's negotiating committee--which is quite curious, seeing as how there is 1) a long-standing policy of protecting the anonymity of individual committee members and 2) she had to know this email would be leaked despite a news-media blackout.

This could be a political move, because at least seven of the 13 members she named have significant TV (and film) experience. The running contention from the Membership First wing of SAG--which has the controlling interest on the guild's national board and has led the feud with AFTRA for a year or more--is that negotiators for AFTRA do not work the contracts they help to negotiate. Reardon's naming names could be an oblique way for the federation to counter the charge. Still, Membership First partisans would probably say 13 out of 13 of their negotiators work the contracts.

And, speaking of West Coast enmity toward AFTRA, an SoCal-based AFTRA member sent an anonymous letter to Back Stage saying the federation "should be dissolved or swallowed up by SAG." Apparently he was miffed because he wasn't included in the mass mailing of a previous Reardon letter to members, which stated the two sides were "making progress." Given the more cautious tone of today's email, he didn't really miss anything.

--Andrew Salomon