September 4, 2000


Features

Never Mind the Bollocks
BY BILL BOISVERT

Here's the new Republican Party

The Battle of Philadelphia
BY DAVE LINDORFF

Working It
BY DAVID MOBERG
Will unions go all out for Gore?

Black Radicals Regroup
BY SALIM MUWAKKIL
Detroit hosts the Black Radical Congress.

Mad Sheep Scare
BY TERRY J. ALLEN
Farmers, scientists and the USDA square off in Vermont.


News

Cleaning Up
BY HANS JOHNSON
Missouri, Oregon consider campaign finance initiatives.

Star Strike
BY BEN WINTERS
Actors demand a better deal.

Renegade or Redeemer?
BY STEVE ELLNER

Hugo Chavez leads Venezuela into a new era.

The New Front
BY KARI LYDERSEN

American anti-abortion groups crusade in Ireland.

Profile
BY TED KLEINE

Johnny Lira is in their corner.


Views

Editorial
BY DAVID MOBERG
Big money problems.

Appall-O-Meter
BY DAVID FUTRELLE

A Terry Laban Cartoon

Dialogue: The Balkans
More Conspiracy Theories?
BY EDWARD S. HERMAN

A Humanitarian Crusade
BY DIANA JOHNSTONE


Culture

A Man for All Seasons
BY HOWARD ZINN
Francis Wheen's Marx: A Life.

Interstate Rambler
BY PHILIP CONNORS
On the road with Larry McMurty.

England's Dreaming
BY JOHN GHAZVINIAN
History falls off the back of a lorry.

Under the Influence
BY JASON SHOLL
Sadie Plant writes on drugs.

Vanishing Act
BY
JOSHUA ROTHKOPF
Paul Verhoeven's Hollow Man.

Presidential Dance Parties
BY GREG SMITHSIMON

 

Star Strike
By Ben Winters

Chicago

Richard Dreyfuss spoke at a New York rally on the first day of the actors' strike. Credit: Peter Morgan/Reuters.

For more than a decade, members of the Screen Actor's Guild (SAG) have been grumbling about their contract with advertisers. Last year they made William Daniels their president on the strength of his promise to negotiate a better deal. The moment of truth came May 1, when Daniels led SAG - along with its sister union the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) - into a strike that has become the longest walkout in the union's history. Three months later, there's no end in sight.

Actors and other workers are looking to modernize the system under which performers are paid for commercial work, they just can't agree on how to do it. Actors in network television commercials (and those in radio spots) have long been governed by a "pay-for-play" arrangement, under which they receive a check each time their performance is aired. Actors in cable commercials, by contrast, receive a flat fee only.

In April's negotiations, SAG/AFTRA asked that the pay-for-play scheme be extended to cable, a suggestion advertising industry representatives categorically rejected. Advertisers want the opposite: to banish pay-for-play entirely and replace it with increased flat fees. Meeting periodically under federal mandate, the two sides have had zero success in narrowing the gulf. Many in the rank and file see advertisers' intransigence as a strategy to break the unions.

Despite the celebrity status of many union members, attracting press has been a major stumbling block. The unions' adversary is an industry that creates messages for a living, and possesses a natural advantage in television coverage. "When you're on strike against the companies that control and subsidize the media," says SAG/AFTRA Midwest spokeswoman Linda Swenson, "it's difficult to get the word out."

 

 


In These Times © 2000
Vol. 24, No. 20