Making films is just like making cars. So goes one of the more contentious arguments getting tossed around as actra fends off what it calls a possible takeover threat by Teamsters.

While sets in British Columbia continue to be upset by union unrest, actra is feeling the need for protection, and Canadian Auto Workers-Canada is the favored choice for affiliation by the Toronto Performers Branch of actra.

At a packed tpb meeting in Toronto Nov. 21, about 400 actra members voted two to one to commence an investigation into an alliance with the caw.

The 6,000-member tpb also passed a motion declining any possible merger with the Teamsters, the American-controlled, mega-union that took over the Union of British Columbia Performers Sept. 16 after a long jurisdictional battle between ubcp and actra.

While Teamsters Canada president Louis Lacroix has assured actra he has no plans to set up shop in Toronto, Neil Dainard, tpb vice-president, maintains, ‘They (Teamsters) have said in Vancouver and in Los Angeles they want the Canadian jurisdiction.’

One tpb member present at last month’s meeting says pitting the Teamsters against the caw was simply a ploy to gain support for affiliation with the auto workers union: ‘The executive is so favorably disposed to the caw, the motion was in fact just a clever little stampeding gimmick,’ he says.

Sandi Ross, tpb president, denies the charge: ‘We literally went through the list – a merger with Canadian Actors EquityÉwe even looked at the Teamsters. We looked at the pros and cons of the Teamsters, Steelworkers (of America), and the caw. So this wasn’t just run the caw down anybody’s throat.’

Dainard says his fellow actors should take a serious look at the caw. ‘They wrote the book on Canadian content. It would be natural to speak to them and seek their help,’ he says.

Dainard has been working with the caw since last November to develop cultural labor legislation, and has found the union supportive of cultural issues. ‘They understand the value of culture in the working world,’ he says.

The theory, says Ross, is to get big labor, which ‘has been very friendly to us,’ to help push for status of the artist legislation (Quebec is the only province with a labor relations tribunal to settle disputes between producers and artists).

actra executive members met with the caw last spring in Port Elgin, Ont., when the Arts and Labour Coalition invited the tpb to present a resolution on culture in an effort to get status of artist recognized in place of the existing voluntary recognition code.

David Ferry, a member of actra and of Canadian Actors Equity executive, attended the Port Elgin conference. He says he probed the caw about why it would want to affiliate with actra, but got no answers.

‘You don’t get something for nothing,’ he says, ‘and I can’t help but be the skeptic.’

Ferry says the real issue lies not so much with choosing an organized labor union as looking to performers to keep control of the guild. ‘The feeling I got from the actra meeting was that the majority of members who attended don’t want to be represented by anyone but performers, and that includes Teamsters, Steelworkers and the caw.’

While negotiating for status of the artist about 18 months ago, Dainard says he was told chances of getting another piece of labor legislation passed – either provincially or federally – are next to nil, and the movement was thus pushed over to the advisory committee on a cultural industries sectoral strategy, an Ontario provincial incentive to address government support for culture.

‘There is a lot of very good, solid work that has been done, but status of the artist is the one remaining piece of legislation we are anxious to get through,’ he says.

Although Dainard says creation of sectoral agencies by way of acciss recommendations may be the only hope, they are not enough. ‘It’s not satisfactory in that it doesn’t grant us the one thing we really need – real collective bargaining across the country.’

A major concern for tpb members is that Teamsters may be eyeing actra fraternal – the operation which runs the guild’s insurance and pension activities – and its $160 million booty.

Ross says not only is Teamsters u.s. in debt to the tune of $94 million, but Teamsters Canada is also in trouble, citing an Oct. 11 story in the Toronto Star that reported ‘a major Teamster pension plan in Ontario has run into serious financial trouble.’

‘I don’t want them to touch actra fraternal,’ she says.

Since the caw has no pension activities, the tpb’s conclusion at this stage is the caw would not interfere with actra fraternal. ‘That’s probably right,’ says one tpb member.

Another problem for actra is legislation in Ontario that allows a three-month open season on union raiding. The idea is to keep competition healthy, but guilds such as actra object to the big guns of the Teamsters moving in.

At least two sets in Toronto – Due South and The Great Defender – have reportedly been disrupted by Teamster sympathizers in the last month, and despite the rules of the game, that is enough to ruffle actra’s feathers. In a membership newsletter, actra’s National Performers Guild president, Dan MacDonald, declared the Teamsters’ battle ‘the most destructive struggle of our lives.’

Because union employees can organize on any film set during the three-month grace period, Ferry suggests that creating two actra locals, one to represent background performers and one to represent principals, could help to keep unions like the Teamsters from organizing on a set.

Stephen Waddell, national executive director of the Performers Guild, says rather than creating two locals, actra is looking into establishing a separate division for background performers.

Ferry also suggests that actra work to organize cash extras, something the guild has been accused of being remiss about. As it stands, actra’s collective agreement covers 25 background performers on one set in any one day, leaving the rest suspended as cash extras. Waddell says actra is preparing a proposal to the Canadian Film and Television Production Association to extend coverage beyond the 25 limit.

What has happened in b.c. with the Teamsters takeover is ‘scary,’ says Ferry. He believes the overriding objective of a lot of producers in the u.s. is to get rid of residuals altogether, ‘and they would have a better chance of negotiating that with Teamsters.’