How does the SAG deal play?

Re “SAG’s next take,” editorial, April 21

If Screen Actors Guild President Alan Rosenberg and his cronies succeed in sinking the agreement his opposites on the board of directors made with the studios, their only success will be to sink the normally dysfunctional union into total irrelevance.

While guild members have lost a reported $65 million in compensation, Rosenberg’s people steadfastly refused to recognize that they were not going to bring the producers to their knees by threats and bluster.

If you talk tough, you have to be tough, and without a strike authorization to brandish, they allowed the studios to make their movies and turn to the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, with which they have an agreement, to make a large percentage of their TV pilots.

The actors who worked through AFTRA are also SAG members who want to work, and if the pact is defeated, all the TV work will go to the other side and SAG will be the poor stepsister.

Michael Belson

Studio City

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Your editorial, while fair, was lacking in depth.

Take residuals. Working actors, who make up the majority of any TV or movie cast, must earn $28,680 a year to qualify for comprehensive healthcare. For most of us, that requirement is not achievable without residuals.

As for new media: Producers, studios and actors agree that the times they are a-changing. Producers want the right to experiment. We actors understand. But they don’t want to pay us -- and we don’t understand that.

Trust us, they say. We trusted them on VHS and DVDs, and they made billions of dollars, but pennies went to the actor.

At one point in the negotiations, SAG negotiators proposed a sharing formula whereby actors would get a percentage of producers’ earnings in new media. We pointed out that zero percent of zero was zero. They refused to consider the proposal.

Terrence Beasor

Santa Monica