How is that actors fear of crossing picket lines set up by striking writers???

Question:I know this sounds like a stupid question, but why would actors not appear at any award shows or other similar promotional ventures if Writers' Guild members are not involved?? I understand the Screen Actors Guild's strong support for the writers in their strike, but for some reason, this does not make any sense to me. Could someone please explain??

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: I know this sounds like a stupid question, but why would actors not appear at any award shows or other similar promotional ventures if Writers' Guild members are not involved?? I understand the Screen Actors Guild's strong support for the writers in their strike, but for some reason, this does not make any sense to me. Could someone please explain??

The awards shows are scripted and the writers are on strike so there can be no "legal" scripting except by non-striking producers and actors stay out in sympathy for the writers and to show producers they can't do to them either.

If actors go out on strike there is a huge Theater Arts college pool from which to get non union actors to work on shows. Actors don't want that.

On a regular basis grocery stores who are struck by the retail clerks hire non union workers to keep the store open and do cashiering.

On a regular basis Teamster Truck Drivers will not cross the retail clerks line and delivery food, so eventually the store runs low on food to sell.

It's a typical union method of strength.

Finally you have to realize the big stars, who are the ones not crossing, don't need a union. They are so big they negociation huge salaries.

They stay on strike and support the union for the little actor who works 1 day on their show a year and doesn't work again til next year.

This is for a friend of mine who does 2 Boston Legal episodes as a judge and makes maybe $6,000 and that's the extent of his SAG work each year.

This is done so he can get 5 cents from each Internet broadcast of his Boston Legal episode. Right now he gets nothing for that.

There was a song from the musical Pajama Game, which was about a union strike, called 7 1/2 cents.

7 1/2 cents doesnt mean a heck of a lot
7 and a half cents doesn't mean a thing
but give it to me every hour, every day of every week...

After a while hundreds of nickels become $50 extra dollars in your SAG residual check and any worker will tell you that extra $50, while not a lot, is better than what it used to be!

Once again, it's about total power.

SAG merged with the extras guild SEG and changed the whole face of TV which used to be 100% non union extras and now has to be 12 SAG union extra before they can hire non union.

The writer's wanted to merge in the Cartoon writers and the Reality show writers.

See, that would totaly kill TV in a future strike. It would wipe off Saturday morning cartoons, as well as Big Brother and CSI.

Networks would be forced to run news and sports all night or reruns of Gilligan's Island...

The Actors having won a battle by merging SEG and putting union restrictions on extras for TV now want to help the writer's do something similar.

Union members do not cross the picket lines of other union members, no matter what the union is.

The performing unions strongly support each other.

A lot of the things the MC's say at awards shows are scripted, and members of the Writer's Guild would ordinarily write them. Since they're all on strike, it'd be non-Union writers doing the writing, and working with non-Union writers would bust the strike, so....

There are 5 "sister" unions in the performing arts -- AEA (Actor's Equity), SAG (Screen Actor's Guild), AGVA (American Guild of Variety Artists) and I think the last two are for writers and directors and I'm unaware of their abbreviations. Not only would a trucker not cross a retil worker's picket lines, but these five unions are related. It is much easier to get into one by being a member of another. So an actor with his SAG card is not going to cross a Writer's Guild picket line.