ACTRA Maritimes Blog

$5.65 A YEAR FOR THE INTERNET

$5.65 A YEAR FOR THE INTERNET,
AND THE AGREEMENT THE CFTPA WALKED AWAY FROM

TORONTO – So why did the mediation between ACTRA and the CFTPA breakdown on February 8? The answer is to be found in a number, and in an important missed opportunity.
 

INTERNET FOR FREE, IN RETURN FOR $5.65 A YEAR

First, the number. What the CFTPA proposed yesterday was that ACTRA agree to assign internet rights without any revenue-sharing, for five years, in return for a 1% annual fee.

ACTRA’s daily minimum fee is $565.

So, this offer amounts to $5.65 a year on a daily rate, for each of five years.

In return for this $5.65 annual fee, ACTRA was asked to agree to free worldwide distribution in “any new media now known” – including internet websites like Walmart, wireless, IP television, handhelds, iPods, cell phones, etc.

No revenues would be shared with performers during those five years.

Furthermore, as proposed, these terms would apply to every production ever produced in the past 64 years.

To further motivate ACTRA to agree to these terms, the CFTPA proposed that performers accept a 0% pay increase in the first year of the agreement, in order to pay for these fees. In other words, performers would fund the $5.65 fee out of the pay increase they would otherwise receive. And then accept zero revenue sharing on internet distribution for five years.

Disguised in a convoluted proposal, that is “internet for free.”

CFTPA RENEGES ON TENTATIVE AGREEMENT

Then there’s the missed opportunity. More »

MEDIATION FAILS: ACTRA OPEN FOR BUSINESS

TORONTO – A two-day federal mediation to settle the ACTRA strike ended inconclusively today, the producers’ trade association once again walking out of talks, after ACTRA declined to accept their first offer.
 

Federal mediator Elizabeth MacPherson has invited the parties to additional talks by phone next week. ACTRA will participate in any discussions convened by the mediator.
 

Face-to-face negotiations cannot be resumed soon, because the CFTPA’s chief negotiator has refused to make himself available for the next two weeks. In a day-and-a-half of federal mediation, the two parties narrowed the issues slightly but failed to reach agreement.
 

Producers offered ACTRA members a token payment for internet use – an advance against royalties equivalent to 1% of pay a year for five years’ use. This offer would be paid for by providing no pay increase at all in the first year.
 

Mindful that film and television will be migrating rapidly to the internet, ACTRA is proposing that the issue of digital media be referred to a joint committee, or that internet distribution be paid for like any other form of royalty under ACTRA’s agreement.
 

“We were hopeful we would resolve this issue. We’re frustrated and disappointed that the CFTPA wasted the time of the Government of Canada’s chief mediator,” said Stephen Waddell, ACTRA’s Chief Negotiator.
 

“The producers appear to be hopelessly split among themselves. They were completely unprepared for these meetings, keeping us waiting for more than eight hours while they negotiated with each other. At the end of the day they basically re-submitted their old proposals and demanded we accept them. That’s not an approach to bargaining that’s going to get us to agreement.
 

“The producers’ trade association just put on a play on for us, demonstrating why this issue should be sent to a joint committee,” said Waddell. Meanwhile, Waddell said that ACTRA is open for business.
 

“Producers interested in meeting deadlines and in continuing production are welcome to do so. We are going to continue to make agreements available and to protect industry stability as well as we can in these circumstances,” he said.
 

Meanwhile, at our British Columbia Branch…

(Globe and Mail)  Vancouver – Contract negotiations between the Union of British Columbia Performers and North American producers have reached another impasse and will resume later this month.

The UBCP, the local branch of Alliance and Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists (ACTRA), have been negotiating the terms of new B.C.

Master Agreement with producers since February. The three-year contract expired last March.

In July, veteran arbitrator Vince Ready declared a deadlock when the parties failed to agree on key issues. In September, both sides agreed with Ready’s suggestion to extend the contract under the existing terms for an additional year.

Both parties sat down again last week, only to encounter another stumbling block when the producers introduced a document outlining new terms for new media work — the main sticking point behind the highly contentious contract dispute that now has 21,000 Canadian ACTRA workers on strike across the rest of the country.

The parties involved in that dispute entered back into negotiations yesterday.

ACTRA, Producers Return to Table

TORONTO (THR – by Etan Vlessing) – Striking Canadian actors and North American producers are headed back to the bargaining table again.

But even as the talks to end the 3-week-old actors strike are set to resume Wednesday and Thursday in Toronto, this time with a government-appointed mediator in the room, neither side appears poised to compromise over the thorny issue of digital media compensation for performers.

“We can’t afford to do it wrong,” Brian Topp, executive director of ACTRA Toronto, the Canadian actors union’s biggest branch, said Friday as he and about 200 actors held a pep rally outside the headquarters of the Canadian Film and Television Production Assn.

John Barrack, the CFTPA’s chief negotiator, said both sides need to “back up” on the issue of digital media compensation to hammer out a labor deal.

“But if each of us holds to our positions, they’re right, there’ll be no deal,” he warned.

ACTRA is seeking to push discussion of residuals for new media performances into sidebar talks and conclude a new Independent Production Agreement on the remaining issues.

“We shouldn’t be the canary in the coal mine,” Michael Murphy (“The Year of Living Dangerously”) argued. The veteran U.S. actor, who now lives in Toronto with his family, insisted that the major studios should be left to grapple with the same digital media issues when they hold contract talks with their U.S. guilds this year and next. More »

ACTRA and CFTPA Return to the Table

The bargaining teams of ACTRA and the producers’ associations will return to the bargaining table this week on February 7th and 8th.

Membership Meeting Feb. 8th

In preparation for the start of the ACTRA strike in Nova Scotia on February 13th,  all ACTRA Maritimes members are urged to attend a membership meeting on Thursday, February 8th at 7pm.  The meeting will be held in the Harbour Suites of the Westin Nova Scotian Hotel, 1188 Hollis Street, Halifax.

Branch Council and special guests will outline what the strike means, the chronology of bargaining which led to this unprecedented event and members’ obligations as we attempt to bring the producers back to the table in order to achieve a fair IPA.

Members planning to attend are asked to RSVP to jhuczel@actra.ca

ACTRA APPEALS PORTION OF COURT RULING

TORONTO – ACTRA yesterday filed an appeal of a portion of a court ruling addressing its contract dispute with the trade association representing Canadian producers (the CFTPA).

“We welcome the judge’s ruling throwing out the CFTPA’s application for an injunction,” said Stephen Waddell, ACTRA’s Chief Negotiator. “But we respectfully disagree with the court about whether or not the producers’ association is correct about where further litigation needs to take place. The producers maintain that certain process issues should be before an arbitrator, while we maintain that labour boards should deal with such issues. The arbitrator will not be dealing with the substance of negotiations.
 

“This highlights the fact that litigation is not going to settle this contract. Court rulings lead to additional court proceedings. The CFTPA launched this litigation as an alternative to negotiating. It’s time for them to get back to the table and to bargain reasonably towards a settlement,” he said. More »