It’s been almost six months since the sag/aftra commercial strike against the u.s. advertising industry began and Canada’s foremost performers union is feeling the pain, increasingly.

Having a reciprocal agreement with its u.s. counterpart, actra, in respect of the strike south of the border, has been insistent that its members not take struck work that relocated to Canada as a result of the strike and that Canadian producers and talent agents not employ union workers on non-union shoots.

The effectiveness of actra’s position is questionable, as it is almost impossible for the union to limit its members’ activities since it must adhere to its collective agreement with the Canadian ad industry.

‘What’s happening is that u.s. agencies and advertisers are funneling production through Canadian subsidiary companies that are already existing signatories of our collective agreement, and we can’t withdraw services or we’d be inducing our own strike, an illegal strike,’ explains Stephen Waddell, national executive director of actra.

Subsequently, there’s been an increase in commercial production that can more than likely be attributed to the funneling effect. ‘This presents a real problem for actra to meaningfully demonstrate support for sag and aftra,’ says Waddell.

But citing examples like the raid on a g.e. commercial shoot in early September in Montreal that employed u.s. performers, and lobbying against g.m.’s non-unionized commercial making (including the infamous Tiger Woods spots), the union claims to be doing its best to offset strike-breaking and anti-sag/aftra initiatives.

One of the key issues that has emerged in the strike is the u.s. ad industry’s refusal to recognize sag/aftra’s jurisdiction over commercials produced for the Internet.

In actra’s last round of negotiations with the Institute of Canadian Advertising/Association of Canadian Advertisers, it was able to come to a collective agreement on made-for-the-Internet ads, effective Feb. 1 1999 to Jan. 31, 2002.

‘It’s not the best agreement in the world but it’s a good first step,’ says Waddell, adding: ‘The Canadian advertising industry recognized actra’s jurisdiction in respect to production of commercials for the Internet and it is remarkable to me and very disappointing that the u.s. ad industry that represents the same major advertisers and agencies that we deal with is keeping performers on the street on this issue amongst the others.’

But with the Writers Guild of America’s contract expiring at the end of April 2001, the sag/aftra commercial strike is only the tip of the iceberg.

‘We’re entering a year where it appears that there will be a succession of strikes, starting with the wga negotiations,’ says Waddell. ‘If the Writers Guild goes out and everything effectively shuts down, it will not only have an effect on the American industry, but the Canadian feature film and tv production industry as well.’

Waddell predicts sag/aftra, whose contract for tv and theatrical expires June 30, 2001 will be next in line in the u.s., followed in Canada by actra, whose Independent Production Agreement with the cftpa expires Dec. 31, 2001.

‘We believe the next independent production negotiations are going to be a real challenge. We’re going to want to improve our residuals, our use-fee provisions, and we suspect the producers will be seeking to roll back our use-fee provisions,’ says Waddell.

The Internet will also be top of mind with the union, which is looking for parity with u.s. performers in film and tv product made in Canada.

Meantime, actra just concluded negotiations with Citytv for renewal of its contract and Waddell says he hopes it will be a precursor to a first-time agreement with the ChumCity group.

The union is also set to meet with Corus Group and Alliance Atlantis Broadcasting to negotiate first-time specialty channel agreements with them.

On the subject of pact/cmg (see story this page), Waddell says, ‘They have no place in this industry. The Canadian Media Guild is a branch office of the Communications Workers Union of America and has limited jurisdiction in Canada. Principally, they represent employees in unit one of the cbc, which is a shrinking jurisdiction for them. We feel they do a very poor job for their membership at cbc and that this is an effort by cmg to try and grab jurisdiction from us.’ *

-www.actra.com