SAG Wants New Round of Talks to Halt Solo Dealing
By DARRELL SATZMAN
Staff Reporter
Alarmed that its members are agreeing to representation deals that lack protections contained in a lapsed franchise agreement, the Screen Actors Guild is trying to restart stalled talks with the Association of Talent Agents.
Since April, when its longstanding agreement with the ATA expired, “thousands of performers” are being locked into general service contracts that would not have been allowed under the old pact, according to SAG officials.
Some of those contracts permit agents to reap greater compensation and sign actors to longer periods of time than was permitted under the franchise agreement, and some demand exclusive representation, said Zino Macaluso, SAG’s national director of agency relationships.
To address the situation, the newly elected SAG board voted overwhelmingly in September to form a negotiating committee that will be co-chaired by high-profile commissioners Mike Farrell, SAG’s vice president, and Richard Dreyfuss. (Farrell backed the defeated proposal to soften financial rules and Dreyfuss opposed it.)
The SAG board is scheduled to pick members for a new agency committee at a Dec. 10 meeting and will try to initiate talks soon afterward a proposed timetable that has received a cool response from the agents’ organization.
Karen Stuart, executive director of the ATA, which represents the big Hollywood talent agencies and many smaller ones, said the association is not in a hurry to restart talks with SAG, which she characterized as sending mixed messages.
“It’s predictably crazy. SAG passed a resolution but I can’t tell you what it means,” Stuart said. “If SAG is truly willing to bargain in good faith and there are no conditions, it may be possible to get an agreement. But we’re not going to be blackmailed into it.”
Stuart said her organization would not meet with SAG officials unless financial-interest rules are discussed.
In a sign that the 98,000-member guild has failed to reconcile internal divisions resulting in two board-approved agreements with the ATA being voted down, the resolution to form a negotiating committee precludes discussions on new financial interest rules.
The rules would have allowed agencies to sell as much as a 20 percent stake to production, distribution or advertising companies, as well as allowing agencies to take up to a 20 percent interest in such companies.
The rules, which agents have been seeking for years, were included in a new agreement with the ATA that was rejected by SAG members in April.
Since the new franchise agreement was voted down, some agents and agencies have adhered to the provisions of the old agreement, while others have ignored it, Macaluso said. The guild is asking all its members who are presented with a general service agreement to contact the union to set up a “walk through,” Macaluso said, so they can understand what they are being asked to sign.
Whether an actor can negotiate out objectionable portions of the contracts depends largely on his or her clout, he said.
