The Screen Actors Guild’s push to create a single union to cover SAG and AFTRA members has drawn a new endorsement from SAG’s Regional Branch’s board of directors.
At a meeting over the weekend in Washington, the board voted to go along with the combination — a move that both SAG and AFTRA officials support.
SAG president Ken Howard, who attended the meeting, expressed appreciation for the vote.
“The Regional Branch Division of Screen Actors Guild is the vital and important voice of our membership in the Branches,” he said in a statement. “I’m pleased that they so strongly endorsed the idea of one union for all performers.”
Howard, who has been a strong supporter of combining the unions, told TheWrap after his election late last year, “I would be very good to put all the actors under one tent; it would certainly provide us with more power at the bargaining table. We can’t be turned against each other that way.”
SAG and AFTRA several times tried to combine several times. The two unions voted in 1998 and 2003 to combine, but failed each time to get the 60 percent approval of SAG’s membership, the last time just barely (AFTRA members approved it, as did 57.8 percent of SAG’s membership).
There is a new push to combine, with proponents arguing the combination would both avoid jurisdictional disputes over TV, film and commercials produced using news technologies and enhance the unions bargaining power.
This time, proponents are also citing developments in digital production since 2003 to further buttress their arguments.
The regional board at its meeting also heard AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka.
“SAG does such a great job of representing performing artists, and is also doing more than ever as part of our entire union movement,” Trumka told the SAG leaders, according to a SAG release. “SAG’s active support of all workers’ rights has been crucial in helping us keep labor issues in the spotlight.”
