No sign of talks resuming in actor/producer labour spat

For the first time since its founding in 1943, the association representing 21,000 Canadian performers and actors in film, television and new media went on strike on January 8. But long before that day, the face-off between producers and their talent devolved into a "they-say, we-say" situation where facts and objectivity are hard to come by. On one side of the dispute is a talent organization, the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists (ACTRA). On the other, the Canadian Film and Television Production Association (CFTPA) and the Association des producteurs de films et de télévision du Québec (APFTQ), which speak for producers in English and French Canada respectively. Each side accuses the other of not bargaining in good faith, of ratcheting up the rhetoric by issuing inflammatory statements to the public, and ultimately, of forcing the work stoppage. "I’ve put a tremendous amount of time and energy into genuinely trying to find common ground and to make this work, and I’ve just found the whole process incredibly frustrating, because…ACTRA has chosen to misrepresent our position and not actually engage us in a rational and informed discussion," says Steven Comeau, co-founder and president of Halifax-based production house Collideascope Digital Productions Inc. and co-chair of the CFTPA’s new media committee. "You can only play that game so long before everybody just gets tired and walks away." For his part, ACTRA national executive director Stephen Waddell says his organization tried to enter into negotiations with the CFTPA/APFTQ in February last year – well in advance of the December 31, 2006 expiry date for the Independent Production Agreement (IPA) governing how both sides work together – but the producers kept putting off the talks. When negotiations finally started on October 23, there wasn’t enough time to adequately discuss issues surrounding compensation for new media uses, which Waddell says both sides had recognized would be a stumbling block. "We, for a variety of reasons, really get down to talking substantively about digital media until the last two days of bargaining, and then a gun is put to our heads which is, ‘Accept our proposal and nothing else,’" Waddell says. He says that ACTRA offered to set up a joint committee to study the thorny question of how revenues from new media should be disbursed between producers and ACTRA members, purportedly one of the major roadblocks to a new IPA. "Certainly, it was the digital media issue that caused the strike," Waddell says, adding that ACTRA proposed sharing the cost of an outside expert with the CFTPA/APFTQ. That expert would have been given a year to deliver a report recommending a course of action on new media contract issues. (See the Jan. 22/07 issue of Canadian Communications Reports’ sister publication, Canadian New Media, for more on the new media angle.) But others say there’s more to the current strike than mere contractual wording – the language used by both sides in their public communications has proved injurious to pride and professional relationships, making a return to the bargaining table difficult. "So often, talking publicly about things just polarizes the positions, and makes it that much more difficult to get to an agreement," observes Stephen Stohn, president and executive producer at Toronto’s Epitome Pictures Inc., best-known for the hit teen series Degrassi: The Next Generation. "I think that started happening at an early stage….There was just a lot of publicity on both sides about exactly what was being talked about. I was disappointed, because I think that just makes it that much more difficult to reach an agreement." "My impression is that the producers took a pretty hard line initially, and I think that backfired…because I think that’s kind of galvanized ACTRA," says David Smith, VP at S&S Productions Inc., the Toronto production firm behind The Red Green Show and, more recently, Jeff Ltd. While he says he believes the revised CFTPA/APFTQ offer currently on the table is reasonable, "I think if they had made this offer earlier on, we wouldn’t be in this situation." Not that the producers are happy to be there. For Comeau, the strike has meant the loss of voice talent for the second season of his animated series Delilah and Julius, which airs on the Teletoon specialty channel. "It means that I’ll have to continue animation production with scratch voices," he says. With a complement of 40 animation staff that need to work regardless of the ACTRA strike, Comeau says he is paying out $40,000 a week in labour costs to produce a finished product that can’t be sold at completion. Once the dispute is resolved, he says his team will have to re-record the voice track using the ACTRA members contracted at the outset of the production. While ACTRA has offered continuation letters to permit projects already underway to wrap up without being affected by the strike, many in the production community say the arrangement is contrary to the spirit of negotiation and compromise. "Those letters are contentious, because it’s kind of like thwarting the bargaining process," says Smith of S&S Productions. "They’re not supposed to deal with producers individually – they’re supposed to negotiate a continuance with everybody." Additionally, in order to get such a letter producers must agree to pay an extra 5% in performer fees, ACTRA’s proposed increase for this year. Indeed, CFTPA/APFTQ and ACTRA will head to court on January 23 to argue the legality – or lack thereof – of those letters. In the meantime, Waddell is defiant: "These continuation letters are legal – they are an agreement between the union and the producer as to the manner in which that producer will pay performers." The hearing later this month marks the second time in this dispute the two sides have squared off in a courtroom: on January 8, the CFTPA asked an Ontario judge to find that ACTRA didn’t have the authority to oversee collective agreements on behalf of its members, or issue continuation letters. "When you start suing each other it’s not a good sign – it’s like everybody went and got a divorce lawyer," Smith notes. Today, the strike shows no sign of abating; if anything, it’s spreading beyond Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan, the original three provinces hit on January 8. Performers and actors in Quebec were in a strike position on January 10, but all producers in production at that time signed continuation letters. Meanwhile, Albertan labour law dictates that ACTRA must hold a vote supervised by the Alberta Labour Relations Board before performers there can legally strike. The only province where ACTRA can’t strike is British Columbia, where talent/producer relations are governed by a master agreement between the Union of British Columbia Performers (UBCP) – a branch of ACTRA – and the CFTPA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. That agreement, however, expires on March 31, by which time the discord in the rest of Canada may or may not be settled. The UBCP has naturally come out in support of ACTRA’s strike action, so negotiations in that province could be strained before they even begin. Further from home, Waddell believes that US producers and studios are using the current Canadian negotiations as a Petri dish of sorts, to see how far they can press ACTRA in advance of their own talks next year with two US talent bodies, the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. "It has not been lost on us that all of the US studios have been involved in our negotiations – they’re all there, they’re all represented – and in fact it would appear that the biggest hawks on this issue are the US studios," he says.

No sign of talks resuming in actor/producer labour spat

Broadcast | January 16, 2007

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