The Screen Actors Guild has taken another step to sanity by electing their new Prez.
Ken Howard's election to national president of the Screen Actors Guild amounts to a repudiation of the uncompromising strategy that previous prexy Alan Rosenberg embodied during his four-year tenure.
With an impressive 47% of the vote after a bitter race, Howard's win for a two-year term sets the stage for the next round of contract negotiations -- and once again raises questions of a merger with sister thesp guild AFTRA.
Over the past few years, SAG has been run by ... how do I put this delicately? ... fanatics* who are totally divorced from reality.
Let's look at the recent handiwork of these folks. They negotiated a three-year contract that had 3% annual wage increases, but by cleverly dragging their feet for the better part of a year and not getting it ratified in a timely manner, they were able to whittle down contractual increases to 2% per year ((0%, 3%, 3%).
Happily, the geniuses behind this strategy no longer hold a majority on SAG's national board, so there is a marginally better chance that there won't be an industry shutdown in 2011. I hope.
* "Fanatics" in this contest are people who keep doing the same things over and over ... and failing.
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3 comments:
47% of the vote is 'impressive'??? I don't understand how that can be considered a mandate.
What Steve fails to mention is that there were four candidates for President, which made it very unlikely that anyone was going to get a majority.
Also that the anti-hardline factions picked up seats on both the Hollywood and New York boards as well as the national board.
47% is impressive when you know that the next candidate got 33% ... and the one below that percentage got 18%.
Read all about it in the linked article.
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