I have said all long these statements are nothing more than PR press releases just based on the fact that they don’t provide any meaningful content. However, not being in the industry I didn’t even realize that the target audience is the general public (as you have pointed out) since all working actors would already know everything contained in the supposed update. Thanks for providing that perspective.

Excellent points!

The moguls have a clear financial interest in breaking the unions. They are also under some pressure from Wall Street. From “the market’s” perspective, the question is, why do actors and writers have to be treated differently than all the other labor we shamelessly and mercilessly exploit???

You use the term “reasonable” repeatedly regarding SAG’s contract demands. Okay, so now we all know that your piece is not really news at all, but just an opinion piece at best, propaganda at worst.

Let’s balance the picture by looking at who is leading our Guild. Alan Rosenberg was called a militant by he Los Angeles Times. I believe he has been aching for some kind of strike ever since he took office. In the mold of Ed Asner, the disastrous Bill Daniels, and the completely talent-free Kent McCord he believes that actors should hold dominion over the entire entertainment industry.

Doug Allen, our Executive Director and (God help us) Chief Negotiator, said “Unions don’t cause strikes to happen…” which is, of course not only incredibly stupid, but a blatant lie to anybody who knows the first thing about labor negotiations. Strikes are an acepted and primary tool of labor unions and have been for over a century. Perhaps you might advise Mr. Allen that Management cause “lockouts” unions call for strikes.

I haven’t been active in SAG politics but I will actively oppose ANY call for a strike. Allen and Rosenberg seem hell bent on ruining SAG. Sad. It was a great organizatin.

This is a very newsy site - and Nikki has great info to share - but it’s a BLOG people… TMZ with a business angle. NO traditional media outlet (especially tv / radio / newspapers) ever publishes or broadcasts a comment from anyone who won’t identify themselves with verifiable information to prove who they are. Comments from anonymous people here are entertaining and often informative - but could be posted by ANYONE. You can’t trust the source. I doubt some of these angry anti-SAG posters here would say the things they’d say if they had to show their faces and no one should take anything they say as legit if they won’t.

Bill Gray was one of the kids in Father Knows Best in the 1950’s - he’s 70 years old now and hasn’t worked in 12 years. Someone please call him and let us know if he’s the person actually posting here. I doubt he’d care enough about the industry in 2008 to leave comments here, but y’never know.

Let’s see what they get done. From what Nikki Finke and others have reported, the Studios and their corporate owners seem unlikely to offer SAG anything. Literally. Their offer consists of not even beginning a labor negotiation but asking SAG to continue to work under the same conditions without an offer of any kind. This seems not only insulting, it denies the essential nature of this relationship: it is adversarial bargaining. Without offers and proffered counter-offers, we have nothing. The studios seem interested in breaking SAG. AFTRA, for whatever reason (many believe this is due to their own inferiority complex but I don’t totally understand that either) chose to splinter the unified labor position. Fine. It’s dumb, but their right. SAG has to get the best deal possible for its members. For people in this business, which is an enormous collaboration, to ask actors to take ‘one for the team’ and accept less for the good of the whole doesn’t understand how detrimental that move is for all unions. If strikes are so painful (for everyone) why does the AMPTP push every union toward them? I think we’d do better if every union made it clear that if AMPTP was seen as unfair, they’d all walk.

Maybe then we’d have something. Something we used to have. Oh yeah: organized labor.

But hey, when we stood united with the WGA, we didn’t need numbers or concrete information then, either. Surely they’ll back us this time around!

Let’s keep this ship on course. Won’t be fooled again!

Awesome rebuttal to Anonymous.

Peggy Lane O’Rourke