NEW MEXICO LEGISLATIVE UPDATE

It’s turning out to be quite an important year for Screen Actors Guild members on the legislative front. The 2009 regular session at the Roundhouse – which finished on March 21 – saw Right-to-Work-for-Less legislation, as well as a bill to kill the New Mexico film incentive program. Due to our collective efforts, both bills have been tabled.

Film and Media Day was a huge factor in our success. Over three hundred people showed up to tell the state that “Movies make money for New Mexico”. Thanks to the SAG members who joined us. Thanks also to our members who called and wrote their legislators. Obviously, the campaign paid off.

We’re keeping a vigilant watch for any special session legislation and will let you know if we need to resume these actions.  In the meantime, the next SAG newsletter will feature more information about Media Day, the future of our industry in New Mexico, and how you can help to keep it thriving.

Union Issues

SAG members are affiliated on a national level with the AFL-CIO (www.aflcio.org) and on a local level with the New Mexico Federation of Labor (www.nmfl.org). The NMFL, with the help of several SAG members, was successful in defeating Right-to-Work legislation on a local level. The next major hurdle is on a national level.

The Employee Free Choice Act, supported in 2007 by a bipartisan coalition in Congress, would enable working people to bargain for better benefits, wages and working conditions by restoring workers’ freedom to choose for themselves whether to join a union.

If you are thinking this may not be relevant to you as a professional actor, consider the time frame in which television, motion pictures, commercials and new media productions are made. There is often a very limited production schedule and cast and crew members are employed for days and weeks, not months. The current process to organize workers to form a union involves a lengthy and convoluted process. We believe this is by design, so that employers have a longer period of time to dissuade workers and sometimes even engage in scare tactics.

Your work product can be on movie, television and computer screens long before cast and crewmembers would ever get to exercise their right to achieve a collective bargaining agreement. Meanwhile, non-union actors take your jobs. We feel passage of the Employee Free Choice Act will empower Screen Actors Guild members to organize more work opportunities under your negotiated union contracts. The Employee Free Choice Act guarantees every America worker’s right to form or join a union by casting his or her SECRET BALLOT vote in a timely fashion.

What You Can Do

Senator Jeff Bingaman has not yet agreed to co-sponsor the Employee Free Choice Act, so New Mexico has become a "targeted state" for the passage of this important legislation. Last year he was a co-sponsor. Bingaman's office has stated that he is hearing 10 to 1 in opposition to Employee Free Choice. We must correct that!

Contact Senator Bingaman today and explain that you are a proud member of Screen Actors Guild and that this bill is critical to protect the rights of all workers to choose a union and you urge them to VOTE YES. Be sure to include your name, address, email address and phone number.

Toll-free in New Mexico: (800) 443-8658
Washington, DC: (202) 224-5521
EMAIL - http://bingaman.senate.gov/contact/types/email-issue.cfm