Commercial Strike Marches On: But how well it's working depends on who you speak to

Some of the nation's leading corporations-including the Los Angeles Times-are continuing to buy non-union TV commercials during the ongoing actors strike against the advertising industry. The Times' ad, which is being cast by the Danny Goldman & Associates casting agency in Los Angeles, will be shot with eight non-union actors May 18.
"We just got the job," Goldman said. "We're doing the preliminary work on the casting, so it's too early to tell what the results are going to be. It's harder during the strike, of course. The union talent, especially the older folks, are obviously more skilled. But it always can be done."
The unions' fight is not with casting companies but with the advertisers and the ad agencies that produce them. The ad agency for the Times' commercial is Grey Direct. Neither the Times nor Grey Direct returned phone calls on May 9.
SAG and AFTRA, meanwhile, have intensified their picketing of major advertisers. Picket lines went up on May 9 at an AT&T commercial shoot in downtown Los Angeles and at a GMC shoot at Dodger Stadium. The unions also picketed an AT&T commercial shoot in San Francisco, and on May 10, the unions set up a picket line in front of a house on Orange Grove Street-a quiet, tree-lined avenue in Hollywood, where a non-union Allstate commercial was shooting.
"We're going to be focusing on the bigger advertisers, especially if they're shooting in our own backyard," said SAG strike coordinator Gordon Drake. "Since GM thinks they can shoot in our backyard, we're going to be visiting a lot of their dealerships."
The unions also picketed Nestle USA Inc.'s world headquarters in Glendale, Calif., on May 11 and assembled their largest picketing demonstration to date on May 12 against advertising giant TBWA Chiat/Day in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.
On May 9, the unions also handed out informational leaflets to non-union actors entering the Sheila Manning Casting Agency in Los Angeles urging them not to work on struck commercial shoots.

INTERIM AGREEMENT DISAGREEMENT
The unions, meanwhile, say that more than 300 companies have signed interim agreements that will allow them to shoot commercials with union actors during the strike. Drake said that three of those companies were shooting commercials in Los Angeles on May 9, including a commercial for Ricochet, a mobile data access service company. The unions, however, have declined to give out a complete list of the companies that have signed their interim agreements. They have also yet to say how many commercials have actually been shot under the pacts. The ad industry maintains that none of the major advertisers and ad agencies have signed the interim pacts.
On May 8, however, the unions revealed that the media consulting firms that produce presidential campaign ads for Vice President Al Gore and Texas Governor George W. Bush have both signed the unions' interim agreements.
The ad industry, meanwhile, held a forum for advertisers, ad agencies, and commercial producers in New York on May 9 to review procedures for developing commercials during the strike.
Ira Shepard, an attorney for the Joint Policy Committee-the arm of the industry that negotiates union contracts-warned ad agencies and production companies not to sign the unions' interim agreements, which he called "a short-term fix with a long-term price tag."
"What agencies may not realize," Shepard said, "is that once they sign, they are bound to the unions' terms-not just for the current commercial in production, but for all other clients, now and perhaps even after the strike is settled."
More than 200 senior executives from some of the nation's largest ad agencies met again on May 12 in Bermuda for the American Association of Advertising Agencies' annual management conference, where Shepard gave a report at the management conference saying that commercial production is doing well despite the strike.

TRICKY TACTICS
Indeed, in their attempts to keep producing, commercial producers have reportedly gone so far as to employ a variety of tricks to evade picket lines, according to SAG and AFTRA.
Film permits, which must be obtained by anyone who shoots commercials in Los Angeles, are a valuable source of public information, telling the striking actors unions when and where non-union ads are being shot. Commercial producers are well aware of this, however, and some have been taking evasive action to throw SAG and AFTRA off their trails.
"I've heard that a lot of producers have been labeling their [commercial] projects as music videos to throw off SAG," a source familiar with the producers' tactics said. "These guys are doing whatever they can to get their shots in."
The unions aren't striking music videos-or films or TV shows, for that matter-and by labeling commercial shoots as music videos on permit applications, producers hope to trick the unions into not showing up at their location sites.
Another ploy being used by some producers, the source said, is to obtain multiple permits or to cite multiple locations on their permit applications. This is done, the source said, in an effort to get the unions to send picket teams to the wrong locations. Some producers have put other false information on their permit applications.
"I've heard of mislabeling the times of their productions, saying they will be there from 4-11 p.m., but they actually starting the shoot at eight or nine at night in an attempt to throw off the strikers," the source said.
The unions, however, say that they are on to the producers' tricks. "They can run, but they can't hide," SAG strike coordinator Gordon Drake said. "We're on to a fair number of their tricks. Most of it is multiple permits for locations. But we track them until we find them."
Drake said that he too has heard reports that some commercial producers have misidentified their projects as music videos on permit applications. "We tried to run a couple of them down on Day 1 of the strike," he said. "We thought we had one that was undercover, but it turned out to be a legitimate music video shoot."
Another valuable source of information about the casting of non-union productions comes from Breakdown Services, the company that reads scripts and creates synopses of the roles so that agents can submit actors to casting directors for those roles.
Breakdown Services president Gary Marsh, however, said that commercial producers have not given him any false information. "There have been no tricks," he said. "I'd be very pissed if they gave us misinformation and so would the agents."
Marsh, whose firm serves as a central clearinghouse for talent, also said that despite the unions' claims, at presstime he had seen just six commercials being cast since the strike began May 1 that had signed the unions' interim agreements. "It has not filtered down to my level," he said.
During the weeks and months leading up to the strike, Marsh said, there was a "glut" of commercial production. "We were blitzed. We were turning out 80 TV commercials a day." Normally, he said, "our average is about 60 commercials a day."

ACTOR/DIRECTOR DILEMMA
The strike presents a particular moral dilemma for actors who are also directors. As actors, they are not supposed to cross SAG and AFTRA picket lines to perform in struck commercial productions. As directors, however, there is no such prohibition because the Directors Guild is not on strike.
Even so, a union actor working as a director on a struck commercial production will have to direct non-union performers-and many striking actors think that stinks, even though it doesn't violate the Screen Actors Guild's rules.
That's the dilemma facing actor-director Peter Berg, who long before the strike began signed a contract to direct-but not perform in-a TV commercial for an Internet company. The TV commercial he is scheduled to direct will be shot next week in Los Angeles.
"He agreed to do a commercial before the strike was a glimmer in anyone's eye," Berg's publicist Kelly Bush said. "He signed a contract that he cannot get out of. Obviously, he has a dilemma about this. He supports SAG. So he contacted SAG and they said as long as he doesn't appear before the cameras, and there are no union actors, they are fine with it."
Even so, many of Berg's fellow actors believe that he should refuse to do the ad or insist that the production company sign an interim agreement with the unions-deals that allow producers to shoot their ads on the unions' terms during the strike.
"I don't know Peter Berg personally," actress Sally Kirkland said, "but my prayer would be that he would consider what's for the highest good of all concerned and ask for an interim agreement."
Kirkland, who was one of nearly 150 actors on the picket line on May 11 in front of Nestle's U.S. headquarters in Glendale, said that "the strike is about solidarity, and people splintering off because they are hyphenates-actor/directors or actor/producers-weakens our position."
David Robb writes for the Hollywood Reporter.