August 3, 2005

In AFL-CIO Rift, Whither SAG, AFTRA?

By Roger Armbrust

With the International Brotherhood of Teamsters leading a major withdrawal from the AFL-CIO last week, where do the smaller, actors' unions stand in the argument?

The Screen Actors Guild (SAG), the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA), and Actors' Equity Association last week appeared to stand pat, still closely aligned with the mammoth mother union, although it stands less muscular now than before the split of 4.6 million members from the 13-million membership.

The actors' unions are tied to the AFL-CIO through the Associated Actors and Artistes of America. That organization's longtime president, Theodore Bikel, last week nominated Melissa Gilbert, SAG's national president, for a second term on the AFL-CIO's executive board. Gilbert was re-elected, a clear outward sign that SAG was staying aboard the mother ship. AFTRA stood its ground, too, in a formal statement expressing grave concern about unions walking away from an argument instead of staying and finding solutions. Equity remained quiet, commenting only that it would continue to observe while at the parent union's 50th annual convention in Chicago.

The Teamsters union, which is strongly involved in the entertainment industry, announced that it was leaving last week, with President James P. Hoffa stating, "We must have more union members...," the battle cry of those creating the schism. A Reuters article last Friday pointed out that the split was occurring "because of differences over how to address declining membership." The article included a graph showing that the percentage of wage and salary workers represented by unions has fallen from 23.3% in 1983 to 13.8% in 2004.

Is membership declining among the actors' unions? Yes and no.

Both AFTRA and SAG must include membership counts in their LM-2 financial reports filed yearly with the federal Department of Labor. AFTRA's LM-2 for the 2004 fiscal year shows a drop of over 5,500 members from the previous fiscal year, from 64,980 to 59,431. AFTRA still managed to operate with a surplus of $2.5 million, partly because of a dues increase levied on the membership a year earlier.

"Some of the drop-off is the result of members going inactive in response to the 2003/2004 assessment and dues increase," said Rebecca Rhine, AFTRA's assistant national executive director for public policy and strategic planning, in an email on Monday. "Some is the result of the normal ebb and flow among members who are between jobs or have left the business. Some is the result of a change in the way we classify performers who are making payments towards their initiation fees.

"While we are mindful of the need to keep our eye on this trend to make sure it is not indicative of a deeper problem, our current focus is, and should be, on organizing work opportunities for AFTRA members under our broad jurisdictional coverage," Rhine added. "If we ensure that AFTRA contracts cover the work of performers, broadcasters, recording artists, and announcers throughout the media industries, the rest will take care of itself."

On the other hand, between the 2003 and 2004 fiscal years, SAG seemed to report a sharp increase in membership, from 78,698 to 107,541, a surge of nearly 30,000 in a union that had witnessed membership fluctuate from 77,278 (in FY2000) to 74,162 (FY2001) to 73,759 (FY2002). But the seeming jump between 2003 and 2004 was a matter of compilation, explained SAG press spokesperson Ilyanne Kichaven. Prior to the 2004 fiscal year, SAG's national headquarters in Los Angeles filed a separate LM-2 from those of its branches in New York and Florida. When the guild included them in its national report for 2004, that upped the total membership count, which Kichaven said has been fairly steady over recent years.

Meanwhile, Equity's latest annual report shows a slight increase in members, from 39,220 during the 2002-03 theatre season to 39,544 in 2003-04. Annual new members, however, fell during that period from 2,753 to 2,382. In the last couple of years, Equity has begun to put more emphasis on recruiting through its Membership Candidate program. Its annual report, released in January of this year, shows the number of membership candidates to be 8,488.

So, why the fewer number of new members?

"Over the past ten years, there shows an up-and-down pattern in the number of new members who join Actors' Equity," said Maria Somma, Equity's press liaison, in an email on Tuesday. "While there are a number of factors in the industry that can contribute to this, one is that in years following an increase in the initiation fee, the numbers of new members who join the union decreases slightly. That trend is immediately followed by an uptick in new members."

Equity increased both its initiation fee and dues in 2004.