Source : Globe & Mail

Canadian actors began their highly unusual strike yesterday with no pickets and no work disruptions on film and television production sets, and even a 5-per-cent pay increase plus higher benefits for actors.

The producers' associations on the other side of the table challenged the legality of the situation and said yesterday that they would be filing a legal motion in Ontario courts. Still, the actors' union and the producers said they were willing to restart talks any time, although no new negotiations had yet been scheduled.

So how can you have a strike, the first ever in the history of the 64-year-old Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists, with no pickets and, in fact, improved wages for actors?

It's complicated. After talks in Toronto between ACTRA and the trade associations representing independent producers failed to reach a new collective labour agreement by ACTRA's imposed deadline of Sunday at midnight, the union's 21,000 members formally went on strike in Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Wages, particularly for work done for the Internet, cellphones and other new media, were the sticking points.

In particular, ACTRA is seeking additional money for work shown on the Internet or other digital media. "We won't work for free on TV. We won't work for free on film. And we won't work for free on the Internet," actress Wendy Crewson said at the ACTRA press conference yesterday.

Because strike action has to follow provincial labour laws, ACTRA is still in the process of completing the final paperwork in other provinces.

ACTRA members are expected to be a strike position in Quebec tomorrow, with other provinces to follow.

But the strike doesn't affect productions in British Columbia, where ACTRA and producers work under a separate labour agreement.

The CBC also has a separate agreement with ACTRA. Commercials and student films also operate under different agreements.

But still there were no pickets, and no sign of Sarah Polley outside a Toronto film studio yesterday.

That's because film and TV productions in Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan that would normally fall under the labour agreement and could therefore have been subject to picketing had signed special letters of continuation. This resulted in actors receiving the higher wages for the duration of these productions that ACTRA originally proposed in the labour talks: 5-per-cent higher wages, a 1-per-cent increase in insurance benefits and a 1-per-cent uptick in retirement benefits.

ACTRA executives said they expect most, if not all productions in Quebec to sign continuation letters by tomorrow once strike action is in place there.

One reason the union is seeking a higher wage scale is that highly experienced, veteran actors often have to accept the minimum pay of $565 for eight hours of work. That is the same base level a new actor who just received an ACTRA membership card would also get. The pay scale for members of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) in the United States, however, is generally about 32 per cent higher.

However, John Barrack, the chief negotiator for the Canadian Film and Television Production Association, argued that ACTRA is acting illegally because these letters of continuation, which force a 5-per-cent temporary pay increase, break the previous agreement's protocol on strike-action rules. "I don't call this a strike. I call it an unlawful strike," he said, adding that the CFTPA planned to file a legal motion yesterday in Ontario courts.

Stephen Waddell, chief negotiator for ACTRA, said this is wrong. "There are legal documents. They're agreements signed between the union and the producer, and they constitute a legal and binding agreement."

However, wages and continuation letters weren't being discussed throughout much of the final negotiations Sunday and early Monday. Both sides were primarily grappling with performers' payments for new media.

For instance, when some Canadian productions such as CTV's Corner Gas are shown on the Internet, the producers have an agreement with ACTRA that compensates the actors when the show is shown on the CTV website, explained veteran actor Eric Peterson, who plays Oscar Leroy on the show.

"On Corner Gas, we have a very equitable arrangement for how stuff from that show goes to the Internet, or mobisodes [small episodes for audio-video cellphones] that we do, or telephone rings [featuring a character's voice]. I get paid for that, and I get paid for that in a rational way. It's not a big slice or anything. But it's rational and reasonable and what people should get," Peterson said.

Yet the CFTPA, along with its Quebec equivalent, the Association des producteurs de films et de télévision du Québec, argued that if ACTRA forces producers to pay for all new-media work on a high union scale, the work will simply go to non-union talent. New media work, as Peterson mentioned, can constitute anything from a TV episode rebroadcast on the Internet to a one-second voice-over for a ring tone and every conceivable, digital-media product in between.

Meanwhile, acrimonious statements were flying at duelling press conferences yesterday. Negotiators talked through Sunday night until between 6 and 7 a.m. Monday. The fatigue and tension showed.

The CFTPA's Barrack suggested that his counterpart at ACTRA, Waddell, has close ties with SAG and was therefore acting in the interest of the American union. Meanwhile, executives at ACTRA continued to accuse the CFTPA of kowtowing to Hollywood studios who were also part of the talks in Toronto, since the U.S. studios are particularly worried about a precedent being set on new-media wages as they enter their own upcoming talks with the SAG and other creative unions. Producer Steven Comeau, president of the Halifax production house Collideascope, angrily countered the ACTRA accusation, saying that with so much at stake in the talks, no Canadian producers would risk their careers and filmmaking livelihood to argue in Hollywood's interest.

And so the comments continued as both sides hunkered down into strike mode, even if the producers were contesting whether it could be called "a strike."

Two key issues

Rhetoric, legal threats, blank exasperated stares. That was the public face of the actors' strike yesterday, but the dispute comes down to two points.

Point No. 1: According to Stephen Waddell, chief negotiator for the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists, the union's last offer was to say that five new-media productions constitute a day's work. This would be at ACTRA's base salary, which is currently $565 for eight hours of work (plus an extra 5 per cent yesterday for those productions that signed letters of continuation to avoid a work stoppage). Actors can of course negotiate more if they are in high demand. But any additional new-media work performed during a day's work would have to be at 25 per cent of the actors' wages, ACTRA proposed.

John Barrack, chief negotiator for the Canadian Film and Television Production Association, countered that this doesn't work "because you could have something that is 15 seconds long or something that is five minutes long. When you are in this new space [of new media], the idea of saying five productions, that's an old concept." Instead, the CFTPA has offered other pay scales, such as paying according to length of the productions or the number of minutes of work.

Point No. 2: ACTRA Toronto president Karl Pruner explained that actors are paid an additional 105 per cent of their original wage in order to waive the right for four years to have a particular work shown in another medium, i.e. a film shown on TV. However, he said Internet broadcasts and other new media shouldn't be merely added to that list of other media, since it means giving away their work to new media for free.

The CFTPA's Barrack explained that the current system allows producers to give actors a partial payment against future royalties or they effectively buy actors out for four years. "That's the system now. We're just applying the exact same system with the same number to that new [media] space," Barrack said, adding that new media simply don't have the kind of revenues yet to justify increasing payments to actors.

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