In attempting to undo what the DGA, the WGA, and AFTRA have done, SAG President Alan Rosenberg has my sympathy. Unfortunately his problems are the result of his own lack of foresight.
Last fall when AMPTP effectively engaged in a lockout of actors, directors, and all others by forcing WGA members into a strike, an effective countermove would have been for SAG members to state they were negotiating their new contract as of November 1, 2007, and walk out in sympathy and solidarity. That's what the labor movement is all about. And then, the two striking unions could have ignored the efforts of the middle management non-union association, the Directors Guild.
Rosenberg is representing the needs of "the rank and file", not the likes of Tom Cruise or even Kyra Sedgwick.
SAG should represent the people struggling to get enough work as the "interviewed gawker on the sidewalk" on the CSI or Law & Order franchises. These are the people whose current income could derive in a small way from DVD revenue perhaps such as Meilinda Soerjoko and Lindsey Ginter who appeared in respectively three and two episodes of Lost. These are the people who need health insurance, for instance. Like the rest of us.
They have joined the WalMart workers of the entertainment industry, which includes all those in crafts and trades except the stars. And they all are going to lose ground. So will we.
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