TORONTO – The labour situation between Canada’s actors and producers hasn’t changed so today ACTRA, the actors’ union, issued the following open letter to the Canadian Film and Television Production Association
Today, the CFTPA and ACTRA should be sitting down together and working out a joint strategy on the following:
* The current state of the CBC, an issue we should be collectively engaged in;
* The purchase of Alliance Atlantis funded by an American company, a development with ramifications that we should at least discuss;
* Shaw Communications has unilaterally pulled out of the Canadian Television Fund, followed yesterday by Vidéotron. These developments may lead to the collapse of the Fund. Should the CTF collapse, our industry may well follow;
* Perhaps most importantly, the upcoming seven commissioner appointments for the CRTC. The government has signalled its intention to stack the commission with ‘market-friendly’ people, a cause for real concern.
Instead, your lead negotiator for the CFTPA will be sitting today in a courtroom a few chairs away from ACTRA’s chief negotiator, watching while our two organizations spend tens of thousands of dollars fighting in court.
We are fighting over an attempt by the CFTPA to obtain an injunction, fundamentally aimed at your own CFTPA members that would make ‘interim agreements’ illegal and force ACTRA into an unlimited general strike, shutting down all film and television production across Canada. We think we have a pretty good case, and that this waste of time and money will fail – as all of the CFTPA’s other legal manoeuvres to date have failed.
But that’s not why we’re writing to you today. We’re writing to say this: In light of the developments in the industry as set out above, we call on you today to do what you know needs to be done to end this dispute.
* Settle the pay as we’ve discussed.
* Collect the better language on low-budget production, reality TV, documentaries and other issues we’ve tentatively agreed to.
* Sign a real collective agreement binding on both parties.
* And let’s send these complex, undefined, uncertain digital media issues to a joint committee and, if necessary, to mediation.
Producers and performers have far more in common than we have dividing us on the real issues facing our industry. Instead of building a common front on those issues – work that should be receiving our undivided attention – we are fighting in the corner.
Think about it.
Yours truly,
ACTRA (Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists)
