TORONTO – ACTRA’s bargaining team has decided that after 17 slow months of negotiations with Canada’s ad agencies and advertisers, it will seek a strike mandate from its membership.
“We’re going to our members to ask for a strike mandate to demonstrate loud and clear that performers will not accept less for their work,” said Stephen Waddell, ACTRA’s national executive director, in a press release. “After almost a year and a half of negotiations, our members’ patience is running out.”
While ceding some progress, the actors’ union negotiating team and representatives from the Institute of Communications Agencies (ICA) and the Association of Canadian Advertisers (ACA) became deadlocked at the end of July.
The three groups then jointly asked that government conciliators step in to help find a resolution. Unfortunately a deal has not yet been reached, despite the fact that the current pact expired on June 30, 2008. The parties will meet again on September 25 with the assistance of the government conciliators.
”All reports indicate that the ad industry has been doing very well. There’s no justification for ad agencies and advertisers to try to reduce the compensation of performers,” said Waddell.
The deadline for ballot returns is October 14, 2008.
