The best, safest and warmest Thanksgiving to all of you, SAG-AFTRA members, pre-union and the entire community. This is a time to give thanks. I am giving thanks for many things...family, friends, faith, the films I have been able to do this year, teaching, great students, the start of a new business in Lynch Coaching, a home and continued relative health among them. I am very thankful for being union and for being elected to serve my union brothers and sisters. Some (perhaps most) Las Vegas would-be-actors have not patience or respect for the value of their own talents. They proudly go without joining SAG-AFTRA while working union on projects, believe that producers should hire them even though they have not made the commitment to being professional union performers, jump from class to class, ignore what their teachers teach them and try to form Hollywood and the industry into what they want it to be instead of what it is. No wonder LA has such a low view of Nevada talent. Truth is we have a solid talent pool, if only they would step up and be professional, reliable, study consistently and not put down the state and city in which they live to appear hip or better to the LA industry. We are as good as or better than the talent who lands the jobs and is imported from LA. We need to study, focus and prove it to local and out of state casting directors, directors and producers. Start with converting local films into SAG-AFTRA projects. It is very easy to organize these with our SAGIndie Agreements.Show them your talent and refuse to work without an easy to achieve union contract. One person told me that Taft Hartley SAG eligible is union, and meant it! No, they are not union, they are scabs because they take union work without paying into the union that makes that work, the pension and health contributions they earn, the contracts and safety they take for granted. In other works...they freeload yet feel they have a full right to do so, while undercutting the unions ability to organize the market and the many production opportunities union talent could benefit from. Like so many small locals we now are helped through other cities, including Denver and Los Angeles. We still are repped and union is stronger than ever. I am in my 19th year as the elected National Board Representative, sitting on the National Board of Directors in Hollywood (national not Hollywood Local Board). As such i am not paid, but I keep myself close to the heart beat and soul of he industry we love and call home. Barbara Grant is the elected president of the Nevada local. Someone who is not union said the SAG President, who she identified as female, told them not to join in Nevada, that there is no SAG in Nevada, in effect that Nevada was no longer union. Barbara would never say that, and the last national president who was female was Melissa Gilbert, two presidents ago. So goes the type of hype and falsehoods that keep Nevada from being perceived as union and professional. We are union. SAG-AFTRA is strong here. We are professional performers. And we have a strong local, as well as national voice and national staff support. Respect your talents. Study. When you are ready to call yourself a professional, join the union. We would welcome you as our sisters and brothers in SAG-AFTRA (AFL-CIO)! Solidarity. -Art Lynch (This is not an official document in any way related to or sanctioned by SAG-AFTRA. It is a private post from the person who also serves representing Nevada on the National Board of Directors of that body. I am not speaking for the union or any other individual in this report.) A thank you to fellow unionist Rik Deskin for assistance in editing this report.
Posted on: Wed, 26 Nov 2014 21:28:24 +0000
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