Parting Shots for Membership First, Unite for Strength

A week from today, results of SAG's national board elections will be announced. While there are candidates vying for seats in each region of the country, most of the attention has centered on the races in Hollywood, because that's where the bulk of SAG's power lies. If opposition party Unite for Strength can pick off a few seats, guild watchers believe, control of the national board could shift to those who favor a merger with AFTRA. Ruling party Membership First, which has increased its number of seats on the Hollywood Board in the past three elections, opposes merger.

Last week, Anne-Marie Johnson (MF) and Ned Vaughn (UFS) wrote columns that ran in Back Stage. Strike Watch invited each of them to write an additional 200 words to serve as a final summation before the voting ends. Their summations appear after the jump.

Editor's Note: Johnson's piece ran at the top of the page in Back Stage, so we have reversed the order this week.

--Andrew Salomon

The Case for Unite for Strength

By Ned Vaughn

Membership First touts their experience leading SAG. Unfortunately, their experience has led us in exactly the wrong direction. Consider this headline from yesterday’s Daily Variety: “SAG stalemate aids AFTRA: New shows gravitating to SAG's rival.” That means more and more SAG members won’t qualify for crucial benefits as they split their work between SAG shows and the quickly rising number of AFTRA shows. That’s unacceptable, and it was entirely preventable.

If SAG and AFTRA had merged in 2003, we wouldn’t be facing this problem. But Membership First proudly helped defeat merger then, and now they want to attempt a hostile takeover of AFTRA’s representation of actors. The result will be a war between our unions and the only winner will be our employers, who will exploit the resulting division and weakness to squeeze our pay and benefits in contract after contract.

Unite for Strength has a different approach. We know that all performers must fight together as one to get better contracts, not fight with each other.

The Case for Membership First

By Anne-Marie Johnson

Ned Vaughn and I were asked to write Op-Ed pieces extolling the virtues of our respective SAG slate of candidates, "statements of why your particular party should lead--not why the other party shouldn’t."

In our Sept. 4 letters, Ned refers, disparagingly, to Membership First 13 times, yet only refers to his own slate three times, using less than 50 words out of a 550 word letter to praise his slates’ ideals.

Vaughn’s letter is an example of how inexperienced and ill-prepared UFS is to represent the largest division within SAG. Nothing in Ned’s letter enlightened us as to how UFS plans to ensure the strength, integrity, rich history, and wonderful future of SAG. He does tell us, though, how they’ll protect and strengthen AFTRA.

UFS is populated by actors who have spent little, if any time, in SAG committees or open board meetings and who are aggressive endorsers of qualified voting. UFS supports the AFTRA prime-time contract and will not fight for SAG jurisdiction and residuals in products made for new media.

Membership First will fight for the well-being of actors.

Membership First believes in protecting residuals, your right to vote, and securing jurisdiction. If you want stronger SAG contracts, vote for Membership First.