Tangled On Cable

Here's the latest goings on between the Screen Actors Guild and AFTRA with the hope of averting another Hollywood walkout...

Dave McNary of Variety:

With formal negotiations looming on the feature-primetime contract for actors, SAG and AFTRA are bickering over whether basic cable should be included in the negotiations.

The latest disagreement emerged over the weekend following recent moves by both performers unions to negotiate jointly rather than separately. And it comes in the wake of the AMPTP's request last week to start negotiations on April 1 -- three months before expiration of the current pact.

SAG national exec director Doug Allen sparked the imbroglio in a letter sent Friday to AFTRA topper Kim Roberts Hedgpeth. In the missive, Allen asserted that the unions could decide over the next two weeks that basic cable would be part of the negotiations "as we have proposed in past negotiations."

SAG and AFTRA currently bargain separate deals with basic cable companies -- a situation that has led to near-constant sniping between the two labor orgs. Allen noted in the missive that at a meeting earlier this month with AFL-CIO president John Sweeney, AFTRA president Roberta Reardon acknowledged that basic cable is part of the 27-year-old Phase One joint bargaining agreement between the two unions.

AFTRA fired back on Sunday in a response that highlighted the ongoing bad blood between the unions. Labor observers have been wondering over the past year how effectively the two unions will be able to negotiate together given their long history of acrimony.

In this case, AFTRA accused SAG of focusing on peripheral issues when it should be prepping for the negotiations and hinted that it could still make good on its threat to negotiate a separate primetime deal. Reardon had insisted in a March 4 letter that SAG make clear that it would agree to joint bargaining with AFTRA with no additional conditions.

AFTRA leaders have been irked that SAG was insisting that AFTRA promise to stop offering lower initial rates on basic cable shows -- long a sore spot for SAG leaders -- as a condition of joint bargaining.

"AFTRA asked SAG for a simple, unambiguous written response to president Reardon that stated its commitment to bargain jointly under the Phase One agreement with no changes, conditions or extraneous issues attached," an AFTRA spokesman said Sunday. "We are still waiting." ...

Simply Put: The basic cable issue should be included-Duh!! Otherwise, that will surely come back and bite everyone on the butt...If negotiations had started before April Foo-Ahem...First This latest dust up could probably have been avoided. Again I say Duh!