An Open Letter to SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher…
SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher.
By Joe Maniscalco
To SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher:
Before launching Work-Bites last fall, I covered the Labor Movement for more than a decade, delivering countless stories on wage theft, worker safety, pay parity, the Fight for $15, you name it.
I’ve covered strikes, rallies, marches and walkouts in the dead of winter and the height of summer, and everything in between, in all kinds of weather.
During that time, I also befriended some of the hardest working, most impressive people I’ve ever met in my life: working actors. The most important person in my life is a working actor and a member of SAG-AFTRA.
Your “fiery” July 13, speech announcing SAG-AFTRA’s strike against the AI-happy Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers [AMPTP] has been widely hailed throughout the labor community. Kudos. You've even been likened to a real-life Sarah Connors — raring to kick AI-ass on behalf of the 160,000 working people you represent, and maybe even the rest of us, too.
That’s all great. Now, please do not botch it all by continuing to think you were ever “in business” with the corporate fat cats at the AMPTP.
THEY MUST BE CRAZY?
Had I not spent the last decade on the streets of New York City covering the Labor Movement, and learning what I have learned about “labor-management relations,” I might be more resonate with the tone of your strike announcement earlier this month.
But your rhetoric surrounding the breakdown of talks between SAG-AFTRA and the AMPTP, along with your proclamations of being “shocked” and “outraged” by the behavior of the bosses, immediately had me disheartened and fearful for the future of all working class people — both inside SAG-AFTRA and without.
You called the way the AMPTP bosses were treating the union and their refusal to budge on worker demands “disgusting.” You asked if they had gone “crazy.”
“I am shocked by the way the people we have been in business with are treating us,” you said. “I cannot believe it, quite frankly. It is disgusting. Shame on them.”
SAG-AFTRA members marched with striking film and television writers outside Netflix’s NYC offices on May 3, 2023. Photos by Joe Maniscalco
It was, indeed a “fiery” performance. But I didn’t believe it. Quite frankly, I saw you acting, Fran.
I’ve seen tons of union leaders do the same kind of thing over the past decade covering the Labor Movement. At some point, they all bellow and bellyache about how the bosses are suddenly being “unjust” and “unfair” when employees are refused a living wage, or even the most modest worker protections.
I didn’t believe them because they, like you, know better. You all know that the bosses haven’t suddenly gone “crazy.” You all know that this is simply the way the system operates — and the bosses are simply acting in accordance with it.
The AMPTP will replace every actor and artist alive with AI if that proves to be the profitable thing to do. Full stop. Done. End of conversation. And I know this isn’t a news flash, but the AMPTP does not care that hoarding streaming revenues means working families suffer. They do it, and sleep soundly, because they are in business to make all the profit they possibly can.
And despite how some leaders may perceive themselves, unions are not, as Chris Hedges points out, "junior partners” in any corporation. We are all serfs and slaves. And ‘twas ever thus.
THE FIRST STEP IS ADMITTING YOU HAVE A PROBLEM
“It’s capitalism. There’s no political solution,” Association of Flight Attendants-CWA President Sara Nelson Tweeted on July 19. “There’s only the countervailing force of the working class standing together in solidarity and demanding our fair share that gives a prayer of making good on the promise ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’ for everyone.”
Bemoaning the AMPTP being a bunch of greedy jerks at the negotiation table is a losing tact that epitomizes what Joe Burns calls “business unionism.” And if there’s one lesson rank and file workers need to learn after decades of declining union density, and increasing pain, it’s business unionism sucks.
Only six-figure salaried officials coasting on crappy contracts only marginally better than the last crappy contract they delivered their members are benefitting.
President Nelson gets it. And so do you, President Drescher. You’re almost there. Just say it. Just a few days ago, you told Salon, “It all has one systemic core issue — and that's greed.”
Scott Morrell and other members of SAG-AFTRA march in solidarity with striking WGA members in NYC on May 3, 2023.
Stop dancing around. You only threaten to undermine the energy erupting from militant picket lines stretching all over the country, and allow the bosses to escape. I’ve seen it play out this way many times over. You are never gonna shame the AMTPT or any other boss into not being “greedy” because you cannot simply convince them not to be profitable.
The success of this pivotal strike against the AMTPT — and all the others percolating around it — depends on SAG-AFTRA embodying that “countervailing force” — not acting like aggrieved “junior partners.”
SAG-AFTRA National Secretary/Treasurer Joely Fisher shared your shock and disgust, too. But she also denounced “the process of going before the AMPTP and and going, ‘please, sir, may I have some more?’ and how the system itself is “really designed to belittle you, and demean you, and disrespect you.”
Nothing but serfs and slaves.
Back in May, SAG-AFTRA members rallied in solidarity with their WGA brothers and sisters holding up picket signs outside Netflix’s E. 19th Street offices in New York City. Class conscious slogans included “Spread The Wealth”, “Writers Generate All of It,” and “I See Rich People.”
“I think we’re all one,” SAG-AFTRA member Scott Morrell told me. “I mean, any production cannot exist without a writer, without an actor, without a director — it's a whole team effort.”
You should know that none of this comes from Karl Marx or Friedrich Engels. It doesn’t even come from Eugene V. Debs or the preamble to the I.W.W. Constitution. Although, America’s homegrown Wobblies summed it up best: “The working class and the employing class have nothing in common.”
Best confront that reality right now.
I’ve done the reporting, Fran. Hope this helps.