Vancouver: Financial accountability and regional autonomy remain the primary bones of contention in the recent breakdown of a signed merger agreement between rival labor organizations, the Union of B.C. Performers and actra.

The latest round of difficulties in this long-standing and often rancorous battle for control of the jurisdiction started in late December when the ubcp, without consent from its membership, notified the B.C. Labour Relations Board that it was withdrawing from merger negotiations with actra and had begun discussions on an affiliation agreement with Teamsters Canada.

The merger between the ubcp and actra was scheduled to take place on March 1.

actra responded with a vengeance. ‘For Canadian performers to give control of their working lives to a union dominated by U.S. interests, in an industry which is greatly dependent on U.S. location production, is like giving over the hen-house keys to the wolves,’ wrote Stephen Waddell, executive director of ACTRA Performers Guild, in a Jan. 4 letter to all branch members.

At a heated Jan. 9 meeting of ubcp members in Vancouver, a motion requesting that ubcp enter into affiliation discussions with the Teamsters was tabled and a new motion was carried instructing the ubcp executive to renew merger talks with actra – only this time with a clear set of guidelines.

Financial statements

The ubcp wants to see audited financial statements from actra; actra bylaw 27 must be changed so that local unions cannot be placed into trusteeship unilaterally; constitution clause article 505, which deals with collective bargaining and autonomy, must be changed to provide for total local branch autonomy; and the national structure of actra must be adjusted to provide ‘fairer’ representation of the locals.

Sam Sakar, president of the ubcp and an actor on the Neon Rider series, says merger negotiations were initially derailed in late November when the ubcp discovered actra was negotiating an affiliation deal at a national level with the Canadian Auto Workers.

‘That gave us grave concerns,’ says Sakar, ‘because we had not been given the authority (by our members) nor did we have any desire to enter into an agreement with actra and the caw. We were just dealing with actra.’

No aversion

Sakar says he doesn’t have any particular aversion to an association with the caw. ‘We just want to see the terms of the deal first. But similarly, just as we have asked numerous times for what the written agreement is between actra and sag (the Screen Actors Guild of America), we have never received official documentation, and the documents we did receive on (actra’s) caw involvement conflict. So having all this in the wind made us extremely suspicious of actra’s intentions.’

According to Sakar, the executive of the ubcp withdrew from the negotiations without first consulting their membership, ‘because our lawyer advised us that if actra did merge with the caw, and the ubcp completed its proposed merger with actra, we would, de facto, be merging with the caw without ever having had any input into the negotiations of that agreement. We had to move in a timely fashion to avoid being pushed back into some arbitration that would have seen us lose the ground we had gained.’

Strong sentiment

‘Frankly,’ says Sakar, ‘from the strong sentiment we received at the meeting, I don’t think our members are interested in being affiliated with either the caw or the Teamsters. They want to be their own union, the performer’s union, and I think that’s right.

‘The reason we brought forward the Teamsters motion was that we, as the executive, wanted to present our members with an alternative to get people to realize there are other choices other than just going back (to actra), and this at least has focused everyone’s attention. All the bickering between the two unions over the last year had caused most people to tune out. Now they’re paying attention again,’ says Sakar, adding:

‘These guidelines from the membership give us a lot more strength at the bargaining table because they have been sent directly from the membership as opposed to just the executive.’

Ken Kramer, president of ACTRA Performers Guild in b.c., says many of the problems in merging the two groups stem from the ubcp insisting on coming into actra on its own terms.

‘The proposed affiliation with the Teamsters, which represents film industry drivers in b.c., would have given the Teamsters an excuse to go after actra’s jurisdiction across the country, which would then bring us (actra) into a full-fledged labor war. And this industry is already fragile enough,’ says Kramer.

Norm Wilkinson, president of Teamsters Local 155, says they previously approached the ubcp about an affiliation in the hope of providing some stability to the industry, which has been unsettled by continued fighting between actra and the ubcp.

Wilkinson denies that the Teamsters were being used as a big stick in merger negotiations to get actra to agree to more of the ubcp’s demands.

‘No, we were very serious about an affiliation,’ he says. ‘We have always had a very good relationship with the ubcp since it was formed four years ago, and we were just very concerned about the ubcp being stuck in talks with actra for more than a year and a half with no settlement being reached.

‘The fact is, the Teamsters were interested in an affiliation with the ubcp because it is the mandate of the Teamsters to organize or affiliate with any group that wants to come in,’ says Wilkinson.

He admits that the Teamsters, using the model established by the ubcp, would have attempted to organize performers in other parts of Canada.

Sakar hopes there can be a meeting between both sides that will allow for questions from union members, with a chairman acting as a facilitator to find out what is really going on.

At press time, the two groups were scheduled to meet with the B.C. Labour Relations Board, which had been mediating the dispute.