Screen Actors Guild leaders have vowed to escalate their strike against the advertising industry, recruiting the powerful AFL-CIO to join the fight.
“This is a bellwether strike,” said Todd Amorde, chairman of SAG’s national strike committee. “Other unions are not going to stand by and watch while corporate America gets a taste for breaking up organized labor.”
SAG officials say the only way the deadlock can be broken is to work with other unions, and last week SAG leaders met with lead strategists of the AFL-CIO to look at ways to tighten the screws on advertisers. This course of action might very well pay off, according to some labor specialists.
“There is more coordination and also more solidarity among unions than there has been in a long time,” said Kent Wong, director of the UCLA Center for Labor Research and Education. “We saw this already during the janitors’ strike, where other unions would not let their members cross the picket lines. The AFL-CIO can help the commercial actors by coordinating other unions’ participation and also by generating more political and public support for the strike.”
Sharon Cornu, a spokeswoman for the AFL-CIO in San Francisco, confirmed that the organization has been in ongoing talks with SAG, both at the state and at the national level, to see how the organization can leverage its resources to help in the current struggle. Although she declined to comment on specifics, Cornu said actions may focus on the legislative and political arenas, as well as a push to raise public awareness of the strike.
Commercial actors represented by SAG, together with the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, have been on strike since the beginning of May, after they failed to negotiate a new contract with the Association of National Advertisers and the American Association of Advertising Agencies.
There is little evidence that the strike has shut down the commercial filming industry. According to a recent report by the advertising industry, commercial production was still strong in July (1,725 commercials produced, vs. 2,035 in July 1999), with all but 4 percent of the acting fees going to non-union talent.
