LOS ANGELES (July 8, 2008) - The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) announced today that AFTRA members ratified a new three-year primetime television agreement (Exhibit A of the AFTRA Network Television Code) reached with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) by a 62.4% margin.
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Thanks to all of you who stood together and chose to be listed here. And thanks to all who honored their responsibility as AFTRA members by voting.

AFTRA has made a good deal. In fact, under the current circumstances, it's a very good deal. As did the DGA, WGA and AFTRA Net Code deals, the AFTRA Exhibit "A" deal establishes important new principals, and even improves on those deals. It benefits every working member, and will immediately put the industry back to work without rollbacks or the egregious concessions that producers were insisting on (and SAG has yet to overcome). And it sets the stage for future negotiations.

More importantly, we are voting YES because if this contract doesn't pass, it will set us back to a place from which we may not recover.

If the AFTRA deal is defeated, we believe two things will happen:

(1)   AFTRA will almost certainly step back and let SAG attempt to make a deal without them. AFTRA will NOT go back to the table with SAG, no matter what the SAG leadership is saying - you just can't spend years openly vilifying another organization, destroying their work, and still expect them to come back and work cooperatively. AFTRA will let SAG go in with its list of demands (that none of the other unions got) and hold us all hostage.

(2)  The film and TV industry will largely shut down. After July 1st, either our employers will lock us out, or SAG will strike. Despite the assurances from SAG leadership that "voting NO does not mean a strike", there really is no alternative if the AFTRA deal is defeated.

WE ARE VOTING YES BECAUSE FOR A DECADE THE  "MEMBERSHIP FIRST"  LEADERSHIP'S JUDGMENT HAS REPEATEDLY BEEN PROVEN FAULTY, AND THEY ARE WRONG AGAIN.

The anti-AFTRA campaign that SAG is waging is one more example in a series of short-sighted "It's not good enough - vote it down" campaigns that have brought SAG to a halt over the last 10 years:

In every case, their "strategy" has left actors worse off: The Commercials strike delivered none of the outsized demands, and cost $240 million in earnings, $25 million in P&H contributions, and $7 million in dues. The defeat of the Agents deal has left actors with no SAG agreement at all, and absolutely no protections - or recourse - with their agents.

But the most critical blunder was fighting the merger because, had the unions merged, none of this would be happening now.

SAG members were warned in 1998 and 2003 that if we didn't merge there would be a jurisdictional war between SAG and AFTRA. But the anti-merger leaders - the same individuals in charge right now - insisted that the unions would simply keep negotiating cooperatively under the "Phase 1" agreement as they had always done. Having prevented the merger, this SAG leadership then spent last year attacking AFTRA and trying to force radical changes in the "Phase 1" agreement, leading inevitably to where we are now.

The DGA, IATSE, AFL-CIO and everyone in Hollywood who cares about the working people in the film and TV industry know that this self-defeating and destructive behavior must stop. Each of us individually and the industry as a whole have been hurt by the WGA strike and are now being hurt by the de facto lock-out caused by SAG's insistence on delaying negotiations.

Well, fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on ME. We won't follow the same "leaders" over the same cliff. And we hope that you won't either.

VOTE YES