Friday, February 20, 2009

CM PRESS # 615


MY EXPERIENCE WITH UNIONS

As the City of Costa Mesa tries to balance the budget, it is apparently finding strong resistance among the four employee unions that represent City employees.

This resistance seems to be strongest with the police and firefighter unions.

This isn't too surprising. These two unions, and especially the police union, constantly try to influence politics in Costa Mesa and probably feel they have leverage as a result.

When last we checked, and as we've reported before, more than seventy-five percent of the police officers who work for the citizens of Costa Mesa don't even live in Costa Mesa. So, they can't vote here. That doesn't keep the unions from spending money to try to elect City Councilmembers who will play ball with the unions though.

At present, the only Councilmember who apparently agreed to play ball with the unions is ultra-liberal Democrat Katrina Foley who seemingly is more interested in raising our taxes and fees than asking the unions to take some cost cutting measures to help out the City.

You probably received mailers during the last election cycle from the police union backing Foley.

As we type this, we have one of their mailers in front of us and it talks about Foley's "strong support for law enforcement's efforts to protect us from violent crime."

Oh, good grief! What a bunch of baloney!

Foley was the only Councilmember who refused to sign a letter to then President Bush asking that he protect our borders. She was also opposed to ICE training for our cops.

And, her idea of protecting us from violent crime is to bring a dish of lasagna to the family of a man killed in a drive-by shooting, plant flowers in front of the Mission-Mendoza slum in her Mesa del Mar neighborhood, and support hug-a-thug programs that cost us money and which don't work.

Whenever I think of unions, I remember my own experience with them.

The New York Times

Years ago, I was hired by the New York Times to work out of their headquarters at 42nd Street and Broadway in New York. This was to be one of several day jobs I had while acting.

When I was hired, I had to sign a number of forms. One was an application to join a union. I told the personnel people I didn't want to join a union. They told me that if I didn't join the union I couldn't work at the Times. I signed. That was the last I heard of that union, except to see that some of my pay each week went to my union dues.

The Screen Actors Guild

While working at the Times, I continued acting and was constantly being cast in off-off Broadway plays mostly in Greenwich Village and surrounding areas.

I was also looking for movie work. One day, my agent sent me on a cattle call for a major Hollywood film that was casting someone of my type.

When I got to the studio, there was a line of actors of my type extending out the door and around the corner. I was used to this, and knew many of the other actors in the line. Whenever something was being cast with a requirement for our type--same age, same general physical appearance, etc.--we'd all show up and we'd all be dressed pretty much alike.

It was always like that. If the call was for someone of our type who was a cowboy, we'd all show up looking like cowboys. If the call was for a cop, we'd all show up looking like cops. If the call was for an Indian Chief, we'd all show up looking like an Indian Chief. It was sort of like a serial Village People scene.

To make a long story short; when I finally got before the director and the assistant directors and the producer, and after I had read a few lines from the script, the director asked to see my SAG card. I told him I wasn't a member of SAG. He said he wanted me in the film anyway.

So, I beat out all the other actors--including all the SAG actors--and got the role under the Taft-Hartley Act.

Taft-Hartley was enacted to stop unions from being closed shops and to provide a mechanism to allow in new members.

The way the Taft-Hartley Act works in showbiz is that if a director says you're the only actor he wants for the role, and after he has already seen all the SAG actors of the same type, you get to do the role, but you're then faced with a decision. You get a 30 day window to either join SAG or not. If you join, you can't do any more non-SAG roles. If you do join, you can only appear in SAG sanctioned films, but you may not find that much work. I joined.

If you know any actors, and they tell you about the Catch 22 of the biz and say they're trying to get into SAG but can't because to get into SAG they first have to be in a movie, but to be in a movie they first have to be in SAG, they're not double-talking you. Except for Taft-Hartley, SAG would be pretty much a closed shop and every movie you go to would have the same actors.

Another twist of Taft-Hartley is that the film company doesn't give you screen credit for your work because you're not yet in SAG even though you're in a SAG sanctioned film. Only SAG actors' names can appear in the credits. So, the first multi-million dollar Hollywood film that I appeared in doesn't have my name in the credits.

These days, I can go to SAG meetings with all the other actors who are, ah, in between roles, as we say in the biz, and call for strikes because we want more money (which most of us aren't making anyway), while the few actors who are actually working and making a living in the biz call for no strikes. Ho hum.

The Film Workers Union
I once went to a meeting of a new union that was forming, after I saw a notice in the trades. On a lark I put my name in to run for treasurer of the union. That's all I did, just put my name in so it appeared on the ballot. I then promptly forgot about it.

To my complete surprise, I won the election.

I then immediately quit the union. I figured that any group that was stupid enough to vote for someone as treasurer who knew as little about being a treasurer as I did, wasn't worth being a part of.
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COMANCHE LEADER'S GREAT-GREAT GRANDSON GOES ON WARPATH AND SAYS ATTORNEY GENERAL HOLDER COMMITS HATE SPEECH
Bad Eagle's descendant takes on Attorney General Holder and his comments about us being cowards. Worth a read. LINK

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