It’s true background performers are supposed to blend silently into the action in film and tv productions, but Charlie Fife, president of the Professional Association of Canadian Talent, is taking steps to ensure their voices are heard off screen.

A fledgling background performers union claiming 1,400 members across the country, pact has been attempting to muscle away actra’s jurisdiction over extras and improve working conditions for them.

Fife, himself a background performer, helped establish pact in May 1998 after seeing what he felt were unacceptable conditions for non-actra talent on sets.

Late last month, pact and actra went before the Canadian Artists and Producers Professional Relations Tribunal to plead their cases to be the sole bargaining agent for background performers in Canada. With round one of the hearings over, Fife is confident pact will be granted certification.

The idea to start a background performers union, says Fife, was born on the set of an Amanda Marshall music video a couple of years back. Fife and his fellow performers were reportedly appalled by the conditions in which they had to work, seeing double standards everywhere on the set.

‘On this particular set, the cast background was approximately 200 people sharing one outdoor Johnny-On-The-Spot for both sexes, whereas actra-[repped background performers and talent] were using indoor washrooms in a nice warm building,’ recalls Fife. ‘To me this was ridiculous. During the course of the day the meals for actra were always a banquet[-like spread], whereas our group was fed some kind of a macaroni and cheese type affair. And these groups were doing the exact same job.’

Fife says the story-swapping began almost as a contest of one-upmanship as to who among his group of extras had been treated the most unfairly during their time in the industry.

Fife and his colleagues had had enough and assembled a small group to meet with actra and discuss its treatment of background performers, only to find, says Fife, that actra held the certificate saying it represents all background performers in film and television. Fife says the group continued to meet with actra over a five-month period.

‘During the course of the meetings it became obvious to us that actra had no intention of representing this group,’ says Fife. ‘[actra was] under the impression that the certificate they held gave them the option of representing, not the obligation of representing, the group.’

Fife and his cronies decided they would have to plead their case to another union and found the Canadian Media Guild, which has ties with the cbc, National Film Board and a number of Canadian producers and directors. Together, as pact/cmg, the group submitted its application for certification on March 31. Word began to spread about the union and Fife found himself touring Canada to bolster membership.

‘I began flying around the country because we had received so many responses,’ says Fife. ‘All of a sudden we were getting calls from Newfoundland, Vancouver Island and everywhere in between. Between the time the certification went in and now, we’ve almost doubled in number.’

With nearly 1,400 members, pact had its first round of hearings before the capprt Sept. 26 and 27. During the hearings, Fife says actra wrapped up its case while pact has only just begun to plead its case.

‘It took [actra] approximately a day and a half, while we on the other hand have only called our first two witnesses and shown probably only 3% of our evidence,’ he says.

The next capprt hearings take place in November.

With steps toward certification becoming strides, Fife says for producers, there are a lot of advantages to using pact-repped background performers. He says many of the members rely on this work as a major [and sometimes only] source of income and are very aware of their role on set.

‘Our members by and large tend to have been in the industry an average of five years, some as long as 15 years,’ says Fife. He says the average annual number of days on set per performer is between 100 and 120.

‘They are very professional and that is what we have to offer these producers,’ says Fife. ‘If you give [producers] a professional group that knows what they are doing, in the end it does save them a lot of money, even though it is going to cost them a little more in hourly wages.’

pact is also implementing a training program for its junior members.

‘If you are using people off the street, they don’t have a clue what is expected of them or how to behave, or even what certain terms mean,’ says Fife. ‘There are advantages to having people who know what they are doing.’ *

-www.pactcanada.org