Unions

By
Javier Ronceros
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This month’s The State of Show Business: “Unions.” I just want to work. I want more opportunities to read for roles that are usually read for by other actors that don’t look like me. I want to chance to do great work for fair pay. That’s the bottom line.
This month’s The State of Show Business: “Unions.” I just want to work. I want more opportunities to read for roles that are usually read for by other actors that don’t look like me. I want to chance to do great work for fair pay. That’s the bottom line.

[NoHo Arts District, CA] – This month’s The State of Show Business: “Unions.”

I got into the Screen Actors Guild a bit backward. My first acting job came to me on a low-budget, independently produced film shooting in Connecticut. It was 1989 and the first time I heard of SAG, I was already on set speaking to a SAG representative. I had booked a supporting role and believed I was just an extra, but apparently, the director wanted to throw me some lines. The SAG representative told the director that in order for the production not to be fined for focusing a non-union actor on a union shoot, I had to join SAG before my next day of shooting. This was my first experience with any union representation. After a few years of working consistently, I came to rely on my union for safety on set concerns, meal penalties, overtime, and residuals. It was a marriage of mutual convenience.

During my time in New York as an actor, I took advantage of the various programs they had in place. There was the SAG Conservatory where I could take some classes from on-camera audition techniques, to stage combat and voiceover classes. All for the very affordable fee of $10 a year. I met a lot of lovely people and some colleagues. I attended SAG General Membership meetings and I always took advantage of SAG members-only screenings with Q&As. I even joined the EEOC committee when I was in New York. The honeymoon was still on. Then after my first year as a working actor, the New York Stagehands (IATSE) had a strike and I suddenly found myself confronted with the issue of crossing or not crossing a picket line.

That’s when I decided to move to L.A. with my family and try my hand at swimming with the very big fish. I transferred my home membership from New York to Los Angeles. I found that there was a very definite line drawn between non-union and SAG work. The allure of non-union work was that there was a lot more of it and that there was usually a cash buyout instead of residuals. Non-union work was also everywhere; commercials, theatre, and film work. 

This month’s The State of Show Business: “Unions.” I just want to work. I want more opportunities to read for roles that are usually read for by other actors that don’t look like me. I want to chance to do great work for fair pay. That’s the bottom line.

Rule number one at SAG was that we were never to take non-union work. Does that include independent short films shot by friends or colleagues that had zero budgets and no oversight? What about student films? What about modelling or print work If I wanted to make a film and wanted to use SAG actors, would that be impossible without a large budget or what? The Screen Actors Guild had lots of different contracts to accommodate most budgets and projects. It involved applying to be a signatory of the union with various other requirements depending on the production budget and possible distribution mechanisms in order for SAG actors to participate in low to no budget projects.

I have always been a “Union Man” (up the workers and all that stuff). But some criticisms remain in my mind. The whole pension and health requirements for medical insurance and accessing your pension, should you ever require it, is strewn with complicated eligibility requirements and dizzying bureaucracy. The political in fighting within the board management is counter productive at times. Our brothers and sisters of the WGA are currently on strike and I for one support their efforts. Soon, our contracts come up for renewal with the producers and if need be, we will strike. All this is important and good, but deep down inside, I just want to work. I want more opportunities to read for roles that are usually read for by other actors that don’t look like me. I want the chance to do great work for fair pay. That’s the bottom line. Will my union help me get there? I hope so. However, it does feel good to know that there is an organization, a union, that has my best interest at heart. I may not be as powerful as Mr. Brad Pitt, but as we’re in the same union, I am just as important.