I have been pretty quiet about the SAG situation for a while... mostly because the story was written months ago and has played out pretty much as expected, except for the current SAG leadership continuing to hold out for a better deal and AMPTP not really sweating it.
The story that has suddenly heated up are dissident groups. But those groups pretty much defined themselves early in the year and there are no real surprises in their appearance as the non-strike/non-contract period has moved towards election time.
The reasons to merge or not to merge with AFTRA have been causing the same arguments for years. But the failure to negotiate a new contract is not just - or even primarily - about AFTRA. It's DGA, WGA, and then AFTRA.
SAG leadership wants more than the others got. (And by "more," I mean more than the multiples of it that SAG traditionally gets based on the contracts of other unions.) They deserve more than the others got. The others deserved more too.
But it's over.
The AMPTP won this cycle of negotiation in February. They gave what they were always willing to give. They gave it to DGA, then WGA, then AFTRA.
It's over.
There is no windmill big enough to get SAG members - even the out of work ones... even the strike committee - to go out on strike. (One thing is even more for sure... a merged SAG/AFTRA would ve very unlikely to EVER go out on strike again. AMPTP could forever sweeten the pot for one constituency - the cheaper one - and avoid a 75% vote to strike in perpetuity.)
In the meanwhile, they really need to bite the bullet, grab the scraps they can grab for this contract, and start sorting out the internal battles in time for the next round of negotiations. Because they were f-ed this time through. No matter how supportive they were of WGA, SAG needed their ISSUE to go to war over and for WGA to go to war over. But THE ISSUE never landed. And instead, they got distracted by AFTRA and the same old merge/don't merge shite... not to mention the idiotic fight over qualified voting.
The unions didn't get killed by AMPTP this year. They got what was coming. They got what the studios knew they would have to put on the table. And they got it in the midst of a tight market. But once again we are reminded... the unions are not where the big money is a problem. It's in marketing and agenting. AMPTP will never be able to rebuild a middle class for actors... nor is it their job to do so.
Time to put down the shields and swords and to get your own house in order, SAG. There's no fight left to see here.
Read the complete post at http://www.mcnblogs.com/thehotblog/archives/2008/08/sag_redux.html