Board elections to weigh pros and cons of union
The prospect of a renewed push for a merger between SAG and AFTRA is looming large over the Screen Actors Guild’s upcoming board election.
The pros and cons of a union of the unions is a key issue in the campaigning among those seeking seats on SAG’s 71-member national board, even though the merger itself is not an issue on the ballot.
SAG’s 70,000 members in the Hollywood branch will see their mailboxes and email inboxes fill up over the next month with missives from SAG’s rival governing factions, Unite for Strength and Membership First, addressing the merger question. Ballots for the board election were mailed to SAG members this week, with the results set to be announced Sept. 23.
Unite for Strength — which has made a renewed push for a SAG-AFTRA merger its defining issue — has racked up endorsements from Alec Baldwin, Matt Damon, Felicity Huffman, William H. Macy, Sigourney Weaver and Sam Worthington. UFS and its allies in New York and other branches are aiming to increase their narrow majority of between 55% and 60% of the seats on the national board.
“Protecting actors and their families is serious business,” Damon states in the UFS mailer. “UFS understands we’re much stronger if SAG and AFTRA become one union, and I trust them to make it happen. They have my full support.”
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“Merger” a misguided simplistic solution to those who would sell their souls to evil just to make a little more by selling out to a known worthless association known as AFTRA ,Phase one has proven by word,actions and deeds that AFTRA is not an “actors union”. My professional and personal experiences bring me to this conclusion. I know that this will fall on deaf ears, and blind eyes. when a member has to go to the OLMS to force AFTRA to provide a ballot petition , while AFTRA implied I was a liar, You would come to the same conclusion,Money and not members are AFTRA’s major concern,The “AFTRA leadership team” slate monicker really does smack of impropriety with national union election laws does it not? or could you be a bigot as well?