The Report Once every two years, AFTRA members elect delegates to represent them at AFTRA's biennial conventions.  This year's convention was held in Seattle, Washington, home to IT / gamer king Microsoft as well as a growing Local in AFTRA.   For three days, AFTRA delegates from across the country, from all jurisdictions of work, met to hear featured speakers, industry reports and discuss the business and future of the union.  When the sessions break, other committee meetings and caucuses take place:  Actors Caucus, Broadcast Caucus, Singers Caucus, Legislative Committee, EEO, I/T, AFTRA Foundation and half a dozen more.  The days are long, the work to take it all in is challenging.

A little history was made this year.  For the first time at an AFTRA Convention, the entire delegation left our meeting to join another union in a rally for their contract negotiations.  The Sheraton Westin, a union hotel, was in the middle of a divisive negotiation with its workers from Unite/Here's Local 8 (http://www.unitehere8.org). AFTRA delegates stood shoulder to shoulder with the men and women who cleaned their rooms, cooked their food and handled their luggage as we listened to their stories of hard work and struggle to get a fair deal in a time of record profits.  Visit their website.  Join them on Facebook.  Give them your support and words of encouragement.  As we left the hotel at the close of convention, one luggage handler said, "Please don't forget us."

The entire list of resolutions passed by the convention will be posted on the AFTRA website, including the resolution regarding the creation of One New Union. Read them. The results of the election of national officers, along with reports on everything from digital theft to digital royalty payments to recording artists, from messages from the presidents of SAG and ACTRA to video presentations of the remarks of both AFTRA President Roberta Reardon (and AftraNOW member) and AFTRA's National Executive Director Kim Roberts Hedgpeth (a must see if you want to fully understand the breadth of AFTRA's business), are all available at AFTRA's website.  AFTRA is going to be B U S Y over the next 6 months.  We must, without any agreed upon extension, begin bargaining

two of our biggest contracts: the Network Code for television and the Sound Recordings Code.  The Sound Recordings Code will be a watershed negotiation that will require all hands on deck to support its successful conclulsion.  And, in the middle of it all, our talks regarding a successor union will continue.  It is our sincere effort to build one new union from the ground up so that it will do what we need it to do in the 21st century: successfullyl manage the seismic changes brought on by new technologies and organize the new work that will become tomorrow's bread and butter.  Strategy must decide structure, not history or politics.  So, please, no whistling in the dressing room.  We're going to need all the luck we can get.  And all of your attention and help. Here's to each of us and all of us and the hard work ahead of us..

And... Before every convention is a national board meeting.  This year's 2 day meeting was especially dense as the Board reviewed and received the audited financial report for the year ending April 30, 2011, approved expenditures for website improvements, discussed further action on the Qualified Performer Tax Credit of the US Tax Code, reviewed reports from the AFTRA Foundation and Convention Procedures Committee, debated recommendations from the Strategy Cabinet regarding the One New Union talks with SAG, reviewed and approved proposals for the upcoming Sound Recordings Code and Network Code, approved a supplemental accident insurance offering to members, endorsed "Joining Forces", a project of First Lady Michelle Obama, received an important update on the Creative America Campaign to fight digital theft and got a report from the Basic Cable Steering Committee on the status of basic cable.  Whew.