or actors, there is nothing worse than feeling
invisible, and with two unions representing 135,000 actors
locked in a little-noticed strike against the advertising
industry for the past 20 weeks, the actors moved decisively last
week to make their struggle more visible.
Adopting what might be called a celebrity strategy, the
unions enlisted some of the nation's best-known performers to
win public support and turn up pressure on the $235-billion-
a-year industry.
In rallies last week in New York City and Los Angeles, Paul
Newman, Tom Hanks, Richard Dreyfuss, Susan Sarandon and Valerie
Harper threw some highly visible support behind the many lesser
known actors locked in a dispute over pay rates for commercials.
And Kevin Spacey, this year's Academy Award winner for best
actor, showed his support by donating $100,000 last week to the
actors' strike fund.
Mr. Newman explained the reason he helped organize a rally on
Wednesday near Rockefeller Center by saying, "They've been on
strike for nearly five months, and nobody knows about it."
To increase pressure, the unions began threatening last week
to call for boycotts of several prominent advertisers, including
Coca-Cola and Procter & Gamble, in the hope of getting those
companies to urge the industry to settle.
While the two unions — the Screen Actors Guild and the
American Federation of Television and Radio Actors — stepped up
pressure, negotiators for the union and the industry held talks
last Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, the first time they have
bargained since July.
Ira M. Shepard, one of the industry's chief negotiators,
reported progress between the two sides' top bargainers and said
full negotiating committees for both sides would meet on Monday
in Manhattan.
The central issue is how to pay actors who perform in
commercials. The industry is seeking to scrap residual rules
from the 1950's when there were only a few television channels.
Under the current system, most actors receive $475 a day for
their work on the set and a residual each time the commercial is
shown on television. The industry hopes to replace residuals
with a one-time fee for unlimited use during a 13-week period,
the same method used for cable.
But the actors want residuals not only retained for network
television, but also extended to cable. Calling the industry
greedy, union officials and actors criticize management for
seeking to cut payments to actors at a time when the advertising
and broadcasting industries are enjoying record profits.
At a demonstration on Friday in Manhattan, Mr. Dreyfuss,
said: "The industry is operating under a very simple maxim —
that they can get away with it, so why not try it? If they can
pay people less, why not do it?" At the Rockefeller Center
demonstration, Treat Williams, star of "Prince of the City,"
said it was important to preserve the current pay-for-play
system, which the actors like because they earn more the more a
commercial is played.
"Show the commercial; show me the money," he told an
enthusiastic crowd of 1,000 strikers. Underlining the importance
of residuals, Mr. Williams said he survived being out of work
for two years thanks to residuals from commercials.
Mr. Shepard said there was progress in last week's talks
"because the union has been on strike for five months, and they
want a new contract." He said many companies had continued
making commercials with nonunion actors despite the strikers'
repeated efforts to disrupt shootings.
But the union says the strike has badly hurt advertisers and
the advertising industry, noting, for example, that Sela Ward,
who last week won an Emmy award for best actress in a drama, is
not making new Sprint commercials.
Paul Reggio, a union strike coordinator, said management had
returned to the bargaining table because "the actors have held
out much longer and shown much more solidarity than the industry
ever expected."
Union officials say most strikers are struggling actors who
make $5,000 to $10,000 a year from commercials. It is the
residuals from commercials, many actors say, that enables them
to afford taking low- paying acting jobs Off Broadway.
"This is the bread and butter contract," Mr. Dreyfuss said.
"This is the centerpiece of what we do."
