Screen Actors meeting in Los Angeles: still no way forward

An air of unreality permeated the SAG proceedings at first. The topic of the contract negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), in which the living standards and working conditions of thousands of actors are at stake, seemed to be almost an afterthought. Remarkably, it was placed eighth in an agenda that included a self-congratulatory 75th Anniversary DVD and slide show, and the Ralph Morgan Award to veteran actor and union activist Yale Summers.

The meeting took place under tense and complex conditions. The current round of negotiations with writers, directors and performers in the entertainment industry, centered in Southern California, began a year ago. The writers, members of the Writers Guild, struck for more than three months last winter, and the leadership ended up reaching a rotten compromise, which failed to win increases on residuals from the sales of DVDs and included minimal gains for material on new media. The Directors Guild and American Federation of Radio and Television Artists (AFTRA) leaderships reached agreements along the same lines. Essentially, the entertainment conglomerates have gotten what they wanted, with minor exceptions.