At the request of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, chief negotiators for the actors’ unions and the advertising industry will meet in New York on June 13-14. This will mark their first formal face-to-face session since talks broke off between the two sides in late April, leading to the current strike which is now into its second month.
While it may seem encouraging, next week’s meeting should not be construed as a return to the bargaining table. Only the lead negotiators-not the full negotiation committees for both sides-are scheduled to attend. The federal mediators believe sufficient time has passed for the parties to be brought together for an exploratory discussion to determine if there are grounds for a resumption of negotiations.
This is the second time that federal mediation has entered the picture. When the first full round of talks reached an impasse in April, mediators discussed the situation with the negotiating teams for the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) as well as the Joint Policy Committee (JPC) of the American Association of Advertising Agencies (4A’s) and the Association of National Advertisers (ANA). That mediation proved fruitless as it became clear that the two sides were far apart in their demands, particularly pertaining to residuals (SHOOT, 4/21). Whether some six-plus weeks of striking will cause movement on the part of either side or both parties remains to be seen. If it has, then there may be reason to call in the full negotiating committees.
Each side publicly claims to have gained leverage during this past May. SAG and AFTRA said that more than 1,400 companies have signed interim agreements containing provisions reflecting union demands. Interim signatories can hire SAG and AFTRA talent during the strike. The unions contend that a major soft drink company has produced spots for foreign use through an interim agreement, and that a high profile cosmetic advertiser has also signed an interim pact covering all its commercialmaking. SAG and AFTRA declined to identify either advertiser.
Additionally, SAG and AFTRA have said that a program enabling non-union performers to gain union status through hours of service to the strike effort is proving to be effective. According to the actors’ unions, they have been successful in convincing non-SAG and non-AFTRA members not to do struck work, slowing and in many cases shutting down spot production.
The ad industry countered that it has been able to maintain a "business as usual" volume of spot production through non-union acting talent and by filming in foreign countries. The JPC contends that major advertisers and agencies have not broken ranks by signing an interim agreement.
But perhaps the bottom-line effect lies somewhere in-between the claims and counterclaims of the ad industry and the actors’ unions. It would appear to be hardly "business as usual" with Los Angeles County experiencing a pronounced drop-off in shoot location days in May, and prospects of even poorer returns this month, according to the Entertainment Industry Development Corp. (EIDC), which oversees the joint Los Angeles City/County Film Office. At the same time, while picket lines and other earlier alluded to means may be causing a shooting decline in Los Angeles-the longstanding spot production mecca-there is also undoubtedly an increased share of work leaving the U.S., with the strike further fueling runaway production.
The EIDC reported that in the month of May, there were 418 film permits issued for spot location shooting in Greater Los Angeles. That’s a 23 percent decrease from the tally of 544 in May ’99. But these numbers may indicate that business is not figuratively but instead literally going away, with a significant amount of what would traditionally be Los Angeles shoots fleeing to right-to-work states, Canada and overseas.
