For nearly 150 days now, 135,000 actors who are members of the Screen Actors' Guild (SAG) and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) have been on strike.
1,500 of these strikers reside in the tri-state area.
Yet few people are talking about what is the longest strike in SAG's history.
John Kailin, executive director of the Philadelphia branches of SAG and AFTRA, said a gag order has been placed on the strike, which began on May 1.
The strike does not directly effect top Hollywood actors, but a larger and poorer population of the acting community — commercial actors.
Alex Colvin, a professor in the department of Labor Studies, said the SAG strike is unique because SAG is a craft union as opposed to an industrial union like the teamsters or Communications Workers of America, who were recently involved in the Verizon strike.
Colvin said the SAG strike is a relatively long strike, and added that historically, employers have success in longer strikes and unions have success in shorter strikes.
Kailin said that right now the most important part of the strike is that the two sides are talking.
Dan Jaffe, executive vice president for the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), agreed stating that for the first time since mid-April the parties are talking.
Negotiations started on Sept. 13 in New York and have continued for a week.
Kailin said SAG is negotiating with the American Association of Advertising Agencies (AAAA) and ANA.
SAG's Web site states that the main issues under discussion are "pay per play" compensation for commercial actors. Pay per play is also referred to as residuals and basically means advertisers would pay actors according to the number of times a commercial is aired. Actors are currently paid a flat fee to star in a commercial.
Susan Surandon, Olympia Dukakis and Richard Dreyfuss recently attended the negotiations as silent observers to show their support of commercial actors.
"I think it is vitally important for the celebrities to support the commercial actors because they are SAG members and they have a lot of public influence," Christine Gatto (graduate-acting) said. Gatto has acted in TV commercials and infomercials. She is a non-union actor but upon graduation, plans on obtaining a SAG card.
"I feel that actors are hired to sell a product," Gatto said. "They are part of the product's packaging, more so than a box. They present an image for a product and they need to be a valued part of the product."
Gatto added, "Advertisers need to recognize the importance of the image that sells their product."
While image might be important for some, Skip Webster, creative director at Barash Advertising, Inc., 403 S. Allen St., said cost is a bigger issue. He always uses non-union actors because they are not as expensive and less of a hassle.
Webster, who just moved to State College, formerly worked for an advertising agency in Pittsburgh, and said although the strike has been going on for awhile, "there's been little impact on my behalf."
Webster added, " People from New York are more concerned than we are."
College of Communications' Advertising Professor Robert Baukus said that in the New York area commercial production is down 50 percent. A press release from AAAA said the advertising industry maintained 80 percent of production in July.
Baukus said the strike is one of the side effects of the changes in the advertising business. He pointed out that in the past year, advertising agencies have been held financially accountable for the failure of an ad campaign.
"Because of this greater accountability on the ad agencies, there are strong pressures in the industry to cut back on the bottom line," Baukus said
"This is the kind of situation where you can't point a finger at one player, " Baukus said. He added that ad agencies are in the middle between the commercial talent (SAG) and the companies who are advertising.
Kat Barrett (senior-theater) was a commercial actor as a child. She said that the strike is a good opportunity for non-union members to get jobs but in the future those non-union actors who are working during the strike may be considered traitors.
Barrett also said that she plans on joining a union in the future, "People automatically assume that actors make money, but that's not the case." Kailin said negotiations between the actors and advertisers will continue through the week.
As negotiations continue, Jaffe said, "We're crossing our fingers."
Kathleen Quinn and John A. McGuinn, spokespersons for AAAA and ANA could not be reached for comment but said in a press release, ". . .We remain cautiously optimistic that the unions will drop their unprecedented and unrealistic demands in cable and other areas of contract. It remains our goal to concentrate on reaching a fair agreement which will modernize the labor contract so it reflects the current state of the television industry in the year 2000. . ."
