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Tuesday, February 03, 2009

HE WILL SOON BE FIDDLING

To any member of SAG who had any doubts about my aforementioned assessment of their flawed leader, Alan Rosenberg, I would hope after his latest legal maneuver, that speculation is gone. Rosenberg threw the brakes on the latest round of studio negotiations by filing an injunction to get ousted negotiator Doug Allen rehired. Of course AMPTP allowed the delay. Big Media is sitting back, gleefully watching this ego-maniacal asshole implode the union. Rosenberg clearly has lost focus of his appointed purpose -- protecting the livelihood of actors. This has become a personal war to him. I am convinced that his sole purpose now is to undermine the success and progress of the majority. The cry of a fallen Caesar -- if I can't have the empire, then burn it to the fucking ground. There will be no peace and no progress until Rosenberg and his inner circle are removed.

From SAG website:

Los Angeles, (February 2, 2009) – Screen Actors Guild today notified the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers that the Guild had received a notice of intent to file a complaint tomorrow.

In light of this circumstance, both parties have agreed to a postponement of their meeting and will reschedule at a later date.

Screen Actors Guild has no further comment on the notice of intent received today or the postponement of tomorrow’s meeting.

From Nikki Finke's Blog:

Screen Actors Guild today received a document that our legal team is reviewing. We have no further comment at this time," SAG just informed me. Now sources tell me this document is a legal move by SAG President Alan Rosenberg and Hollywood Division 1st National Vice-President Anne-Marie Johnson (a Membership First'er) to obtain a temporary restraining order that would seek an expedited injunction prohibiting SAG from implementing the provisions of the written assent of January 26th. An LA Superior Court hearing for 8:30 AM Tuesday. That would reinstate fired National Executive Director and Chief Negotiator Doug Allen as well as the SAG Negotiating Committee. This comes just as the Hollywood Division board meets tonight about the restart tomorrow under the aegis of the SAG National majority consisting of most of the NY Division and Regional Branch Divisions and a minoriy of the Hollywood Division. Since he was ousted, Allen's job has been split in two with David White the new NED and John McGuire as new chief negotiator.

6 comments:

East Coast said...

Brother,
I know a guy who knows a guy who can make this problem disappear. lol


heres something funny,
Word Verification for this comment: villan

Skyfleur said...

I read your take on the SAG possible strike. I thought it was well formed but quite naive in the sense that the AMPTP has already made sure that the contracts of the other unions do not expire at the same time. But it was a well thought argument and I really liked it.
However, your dislike of rosenberg and Allen or is it membership first irked me a little.
For the simplest reason that the people you seem to support are the ones who wanted to sell you out a few months back as a background actor.
Let's review what Unite For Strength wanted when it first got created by brenneman , vaughn etc. They wanted people who did not work a certain amount hours per year not to be able to vote on the basic contract while at the same time being actors not being governed by said contract and thus not having an interest in it. These are the people you support by default by opposing Membership First.
While I do not really agree with what the 4 MF are doing right now, I cannot agree with a position supporting a group who would care less about you. If i remember correctly, you featured twice in Sons of Anarchy, a background actor. I don't think you did more than this acting during the past year. So if Unite for Strength had kept on going, you would not be able to vote. While i agree with the fact you need to work a certain amount of hours to get unemployment benefits as you participate in the fund while working, not being able to vote on a contract that only applies to average actors and background actors is totally wrong.
Plus I have a problem when a procedure circumventing the entire board is used. True, they got a majority 52,53% is still majority, but they did not discuss it with the other 47% of the board and those 47% are not only the 4 MF people. I have a problem with Gabriel Carteris lying straight to the face of the people holding the board meeting.
If these people were to withdraw from the boards and the committees based on the amount of hours they work, I wouldn't say anything, after all they would follow through their own position. But that's not what they're doing and I could bet my computer that they would not resign. I have thus no respect for actors like that.

And let's face it, SAG is a bickering union. Before this, it was MF against that awful presidency of melissa Gilbert and I believe a majority still think she sold you out.
And I totally agree with Rosenberg, AMPTP will give something to the new people so that they look nice. It's machiavelli 101. Would it be thanks to Doug Allen or Rosenberg, no, of course not. But it will certainly not be thanks to the new committee and new interim NED.
After all is done and said, what will happen is that those high profiles actors who are going to agree to a worse agreement than the one signed by DGA and WGA (which is pretty bad) won't be governed by it and will receive the backlash down the line. Though, I would say who cares what fellow members of a union think when the fans are still rooting for them, right ?
Personally, I have no respect left for The cast of Private Practice, or brothers and sisters or even George Clooney and I was worshipping the ground he walked on after that small donation he did to SAG fund during the writers' strike. i thought it was a good gesture but now.....

And honestly, agreeing to gag the duly elected president of SAG is plain wrong. It would be like congress passing a law forbidding the POTUS to talk and he's elected indirectly by the people.

I understand and agree that a strike is to be averted at all cost. However, I don't get why at the same time you would refuse the option of sending the june 30th offer straight to the members to vote on it. After all, it was supposedly the last AMPTP offer and they have not tried to make it better since then, they even refuse to meet to negotiate a better offer. The ones who refused to send it were not MF, they were the NY people, the BRBD and Unite for Strength. That in my book shows something about personal agendas.

surrounded by carnivores said...

Mr. Rosenberg=hubris(/'haɪbrɪs/) (ancient Greek ὕβρις), mythology is a term used in modern English to indicate overweening pride, unwarranted self-confidence, superciliousness, or arrogance, often resulting in fatal (to career/postion) retribution. In ancient Greece, hubris referred to actions which shamed and humiliated the victim.from wikipedia (edited).

surrounded by carnivores said...

Grim reaper t-shirt image:
http://cgi.ebay.com/GRIM-REAPER-DEATH-TREE-SKULL-PUNK-HALLOWEEN-T-SHIRT-L_W0QQitemZ350129426201QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUS_CSA_MC_Shirts?hash=item350129426201&_trksid=p3911.c0.m14&_trkparms=72%3A570%7C66%3A2%7C65%3A12%7C39%3A1%7C240%3A1318
This is a long string from an English t-shirt shop on eBay: kerberos-tattoo
sorry for putting this here but couldn't get the URL.

surrounded by carnivores said...

another update from IMDB news:

A Los Angeles judge on Tuesday swiftly shot down an effort by Screen Actors Guild President Alan Rosenberg to overturn last week's action by the union's board ousting Executive Director Doug Allen and appointing a task force to take over negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. L.A. Superior Court Judge James C. Chalfont cited several legal errors in the lawsuit and ordered that it be resubmitted. An attorney for Rosenberg said that she planned to do so either today (Wednesday) or on Thursday. The so-called moderate members of the SAG board, who are leading the effort to resume bargaining with the AMPTP, issued a statement Tuesday saying that they were "stunned that any elected union official would take steps to halt contract negotiations of any kind." The action by the so-called hardliners was, the moderates said, "unprecedented in the history of the American Labor Movement."

Justin said...

So he's going to burn the village to save it?

/fail