“And I stood up and said it in the national board meeting. I love [SAG-AFTRA executive director] David White. He’s a man of integrity. I know his motives are completely above board, but I think this move is completely wrong headed.”

On Sunday SAG-AFTRA announced it would be closing 10 of its 25 offices but didn’t name the locals on the chopping block. Backstage has learned the offices slated for closure are New Orleans, Michigan, Colorado, Nevada, the Twin Cities, San Diego, Houston-Austin, New Mexico, Portland and Arizona-Utah. Those closures will mean at least 60 jobs are trimmed from the union’s payroll.

SAG-AFTRA has noted that 93 percent of its members live in the 15 markets that will continue to be served by a local office. White defended the restructuring, stating on Sunday:  “These moves ensure that we can adapt to the evolving industries in which our members earn a living, and are better able to protect them wherever they work around the world.”

SAG-AFTRA Co-President Roberta Reardon added: “We are a national union committed to excellent service in vibrant markets across the country. That won’t change.”

Still, DuBois, who has led the AFTRA Nashville chapter and now the joint organization local for more than two decades, said there hasn’t been a clear rationale for the plan

“I think any kind of substantive change like this needs to wait to convention,” she said in reference to the union’s first joint convention slated for Sept. 26-29.

“We were asking that [during the board meeting] and they were just saying, ‘we have to do this now. And it’s not permanent.’ I’ve never seen an office reopen in a right-to-work state.”

The New Orleans local is one of the few examples where an office was closed and reopened after production ramped up.

DuBois said the lack of communication by top SAG-AFTRA officials is making the transition period “especially difficult.”

“We are national directors, elected by the members who will be directly affected by these closures. We need to be able to tell our members, candidly, what’s going on,” she said.

DuBois said she successfully lobbied against the closure of the Tennessee office and saved one staff member’s job. But other states weren’t able to keep their offices.

Officials in Portland, which is an increasingly important production center, have been informed they need to wind down their operation but are fighting back against the directive.

“We are very serious nationwide right now when it comes to fighting this,” said Mary McDonald-Lewis, Portland Local Co-President. “The whole of my board in Portland, 100 percent of them wouldn’t have voted for merger if they’d know they’d have had to sacrifice their local or any local. People don’t vote against their best interests and it’s not in the best interests of anyone.”
McDonald-Lewis is calling her effort to keep the Local open “Occupy Portland SAG-AFTRA” and is organizing support on Facebook.

I have a conviction that we have a right to physical presence in our locals as long as we are obliged to pay dues,” she said.

McDonald-Lewis said she’s received talking points from union headquarters in Los Angeles but is having trouble reconciling the spin with the reality on the ground.

“I think there’s going to be a great deal of tension between the talking points we’re being instructed to use and each of us speaking our truth,” she said.

She disputed the union’s statement that the restructuring was meant as a cost savings. “The point is to centralize operations and create a staff-driven operation instead of a member-driven operation,” she said. “I don’t believe it will be a fiscal solution and I don’t believe it will return us to focus on core competencies.”

McDonald-Lewis said that it’s unclear how the Portland office and others are supposed to wind down their operations – especially considering her local is involved in lobbying for a tax credit bill that’s currently moving through the state legislature.

“My executive director is in the middle of these negotiations,” she said. “Does our exec leave or does he stay? These execs do not know how much time they have. They do not know the size of their severance package.”

She continued, “They’re simply going to shut off the lights? What’s happening to all the furniture? Who’s taking care of all the campaigns? Who do we call when there’s a problem on the set?”

Backstage has learned the union has assigned three staff members from Michigan, Colorado and Minneapolis who will be working with a members committee to “transition” the 10 offices. Moreover, supporters of the plan point out that many states that are major production centers have long operated without a brick-and-mortar office, North Carolina being a prime example. And some of the offices being closed, San Diego for instance, are simply home offices.

Beyond the immediate concerns of union members, DuBois said she’s worried about the labor movement’s political opponents taking advantage of SAG-AFTRA’s rollback.

“The anti-labor machine is big, it’s patient, it’s deeply funded and it has every union-security state in its crosshairs,” said DuBois. “I just think it’s a big mistake not to strengthen [our] presence in these areas because there’s so much work here and you’ve got to encourage people to become a part of the community. If you don’t do that, I believe you’re really contributing, in a way, to the possibility of every state [becoming] right-to-work.”
A spokesperson for SAG-AFTRA declined to comment.

In a release on Sunday SAG-AFTRA Co-President Ken Howard stated: “Restructuring is a necessary step to ensure sound operating principles, fiscal resiliency, long-term sustainability and the realization of our mission to provide strong representation and efficient and effective member

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The boardroom vote to close 10 of the union’s 25 offices was almost exclusively supported by Los Angeles and New York board members!!!

By Jonathan Handel

Hollywood Reporter

Just days after the SAG-AFTRA board approved a plan to shutter 10 of the union’s 25 offices in a budget and “restructuring” move, opposition has broken out in Portland, the site of one of the offices to be closed. Under the rubric of “Occupy Portland SAG-AFTRA,” a petition and Facebook page have been set up, with the petition having garnered 649 signatures and the Facebook page displaying several dozen emails sent to David White, the union’s national executive director.

The campaign to save the Portland office was initiated by two SAG-AFTRA national board members from Portland, Mary McDonald-Lewis and Chrisse Roccaro. The petition was set up even before the board vote, but the effort became more public in the last several days.

“I pray that my campaign will succeed,” McDonald-Lewis told The Hollywood Reporter in an exclusive interview. “I expect it to fail. But history will record that we didn’t go down without a fight.”

McDonald-Lewis said that losing the office would result in loss of political clout for the local. Without events and the “galvanizing force” of an office, she said members will disperse and be less supportive of the union.

“Without an office, there’s no there there,” she said. “There’s no unity.” She called having an office an essential part of maintaining unity during strikes, and added that losing the Local’s staff, including the executive director, political veteran Nathaniel Applefield, would reduce the union’s clout with state government — an especially touchy matter since a bill is currently pending in the state legislature to increase Oregon’s tax incentives.

SAG-AFTRA declined to comment. However, in a union statement issued on Sunday, White said that office closures will not mean reduced core services or scaled-back representation in the long-term.

In addition, union co-president Roberta Reardon said then, “This is a difficult undertaking . . . We are a national union committed to excellent service in vibrant markets across the country. That won’t change.”

McDonald-Lewis disputed the union’s cost-saving rationale for the closures, arguing that any reduction in costs would be offset by the cost of severance payments, buyout of real estate leases, selling of office equipment at fire-sale prices, reduction in new membership and a spike in non-union work.

“Merger was sold on a false promise,” she said, arguing that there was never any statement that merger would result in office closures.

Sources tell THR that the boardroom vote that approved the union budget (which included closing the offices) was 66 percent to 33 percent. The Ayes were composed of all Los Angeles board members, about 2/3 of the New York board members, and two board members from the union’s 23 other offices. One of the two was from an office not slated for closure. All of the other board members from outside LA and NY voted No.

The restructuring process calls for the closure of 10 of the union’s 25 offices nationwide in the next 30-60 days. THR has learned that in addition to Portland, the offices to be closed are Michigan, Houston-Austin, Twin Cities, San Diego, Nevada, Arizona-Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and New Orleans.

Fifteen offices will be maintained, said the union statement issued on Sunday, including those in eight major markets and seven broadcast/emerging markets that together represent over 93 percent of the union’s membership.  The eight major markets are Los Angeles, New York, Washington-Mid Atlantic, Chicago, San Francisco, New England, Philadelphia, and Miami. The seven broadcast/emerging markets are Dallas-Ft. Worth, Seattle, Atlanta, Nashville, Hawaii, Ohio-Pittsburgh and Missouri Valley.

McDonald-Lewis said that all of the affected offices were attempting to stop the closures, but that she wasn’t aware of any organized effort in that regard. She said that, with some intermittent closures or scaling back, AFTRA had had an office in Portland since the 1980s and SAG since the early 1990s.

Bookmark The Hollywood Reporter’s Labor Page for the most in-depth coverage of entertainment unions and guilds.

Email: jhandel99@gmail.com

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Hey, it ain’t like the Local Branches were betrayed by The Big D and their UFS leadership pals!

It, it, it…was just what they had was “a failure to communicate!”  “Vote for merger and We’ll have your back.”

But,but,but again what they really said was “We’ll give it to you in the Back!”

Arl

The Ol’ SAG Watchdong

*photo furnished by the Ol’ Dog