If you heard Tony Russell speak, you would probably recognize his deep, throaty voice right away. Pulp diction, he calls it, a little deep, a little devilish.
You may have heard him recite words that have helped pay his bills for the last few years, “See your local Ford dealer today,” or his recitation of the glories of dining at Red Lobster or shopping at Payless Shoes.
But his voice disappeared from the local airwaves nearly a month ago, along with the work of others who earn their livings churning out commercial advertisements in Chicago, the nation’s second biggest advertising market.
And it does not seem likely that Russell or the 5,200 others like him in the Chicago area, members of the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television & Radio Artists, will be back at work any time soon.
Since the two unions struck May 1, throwing nearly 135,000 union members nationwide out of work along with thousands more in the business, there have been no talks, and both sides–the unions and the advertisers–seem to have dug their heels in.
Such a scenario has stirred worries among city and state officials that the commercial production industry, which provides up to 15,000 jobs in the Chicago area and pumps as much as $500 million into the state’s economy, may continue to shed its ties to Chicago.
Some of this money props up Chicago’s thriving theater world. Without part-time commercial work to supplement their income, many actors would not be able to get by.
“This is nothing short of a terrible situation,” said Ron VerKuilen, director of the State of Illinois Film Office in Chicago.
Since the strike began, some production firms have shifted work outside of the U.S. to cut costs and avoid confrontations with the unions. VerKuilen fears that flight may only accelerate.
Carole Schumacher, owner of a Chicago firm that rents out motion picture cameras, shares his concern. “The business has been escaping us, and so this could be the nail in the coffin,” she said.
What also upsets Schumacher is the way angry strikers have taken to protesting at auditions and elsewhere, giving the dispute a rough and tumble edge. She considers that behavior out of place in such a business.
But union officials offer no apologies for their strike efforts, which have been carried out by several hundred union members. To let business continue as usual, they say, would strengthen the hand of advertisers who boast that they are getting the work done with non-union help.
“There is no production going on in town. Just nothing,” said Eileen Willenborg, executive director for the unions’ Chicago-based operations.
In equally adamant tones, producers and others say that work is being done, however. “We are staying busy,” said Dan Lundmark, the executive producer for Manarchy Films in Chicago. His company has been using non-union help, and the results, Lundmark said, “have been terrific.”
The issues, as explained by union officials and advertising industry representatives, go beyond quibbling over pay hikes.
They represent bridgeheads that both sides want to make in a changed world of telecommunications.
The unions want members to get paid whenever their work appears on cable television. Now, they get a flat rate for their commercial work.
The unions also want their contracts to cover work of members that is carried on the Internet.
At the same time, advertisers want to drop a “pay for play” arrangement on network television that workers now receive, and strictly use a flat fee system.
The unions say it’s about time that they share in the profits created by cable television. Likewise, they are afraid that if they do not get their foot in the door for Internet advertising, they will be locked out of a critical medium.
But advertisers say that their market has changed, and it is no longer reasonable to pay people each time their advertisement appears. Where broadcast commercials once ran only three or four times, now they must appear hundreds of times in various media to reach a fractured market, said Ira Shephard, a Washington-based attorney for the advertisers.
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“There is no industry that can work on work rules designed in the 1950s,” he said.
Without the use of actors, professional athletes and established talent, the fight has put pressure on advertising agencies and clients. Golfer Tiger Woods has refused to do ads for Nike while the strike continues. Professional baseball, football and basketball stars have also honored the picket lines. Because of the strike, McDonald’s Corp., one of the country’s biggest advertisers, has used more of its own employees in ads.
The question on the minds of some advertising agency creative directors is how much will the drain on talent hurt creativity.
“Non-union talent is workable to some degree. But it will knock the level of [creative] work way down,” said Jim Schmidt, a partner in the Chicago advertising firm McConnaughy Stein Schmidt Brown.
While some commercial actors are well paid, most are part-timers, which explains why the median salary in Chicago for the unions’ members is $4,100 a year, according to union officials.
“There is a reason you set that price higher–to get people to make sure the talent pool is deep,” said Tom Ciappa, a Chicago-based voiceover actor, who has done work in ads for Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit gum and Kellogg’s cereals. “You drop the price, that pool thins out.”