From

Mr. William Schallert

Former National President

Screen Actors Guild

Chet Migden (former National Executive Secretary of SAG) must be turning over in his grave. I was president when he helped us dodge this particular bullet in 1981. The 1980 strike had been long (10 weeks) and pointless: neither side knew what would happen when product started being made directly for exhibition on pay-tv (pay-cable as it turned out), and ignorance breeds fear and stupid decision making. (The resemblance to the present bag of issues is downright spooky.)

A lot of SAG members understood that the strike was over. That we had lost, and there was no way to continue negotiations. But there was general unhappiness with the outcome. The SAG vote in favor of approving the contract was too close for comfort--over 50%, obviously, but not by much. (The exact figures are certainly at the guild--probably about 54% or 55%.) The referendum period was scary: uncharacteristically, I actually spent almost two full days on the phone drumming up support and money for an ad in the trades (or maybe for a mailing??) urging the members to vote yes on the referendum.

The real shocker came when the AFTRA vote started to come in, because AFTRA did not use the referendum. Instead, true to their roots as a conglomeration of independent locals, they voted at three Membership Meetings--one for each section of the country: West Coast, Central and East Coast. The West voted first. At a meeting in Hollywood, attended by just over 500 members, the vote was something like 267 to 233. Now the fat was in the fire. Unless the Central and Eastern Sections saved the day, we faced the nightmare scenario of having to cross our own union's picket lines, since most of us had dual membership. And they had to out-vote Hollywood by more than 34 votes!! Fortunately, the other two sections of AFTRA did have enough yes votes to override what had happened in Hollywood. But it was too close to be left untouched.

Even though there was an existing Merger Committee, it had never met or done anything. But Chet saw the danger and said we had to fix it. He drafted Phase One of what everybody hoped would be a full merger. Regardless, as Chet said, this step was mandatory for the future safety of actors in the entertainment industry and the unions that represented them--whether or not we ever achieved full merger.

Forgive me for lecturing, but I did live through this on the inside.

William Schallert,

SAG President, 1979-1981.