The Mercer report has also emerged as the archetype of the “impact report” that merger opponents demand that guild officials perform and excoriate them for refusing to do.

Ironically, those activists – who criticize AFTRA as being too compliant with management – adopted their gloss on the report from a leaked memo prepared by a studio executive who serves as one of the management-side trustees of the SAG P&H plan. 5), a phrase scarcely consistent with the way it’s been publicly characterized by merger opponents. The report also speaks of “the broader benefits of a merger” (p. It also lists various administrative savings that a merger could bring, but manages to quantify only some of them, and draws no conclusions as to whether the savings would make a material difference in benefits or plan health. Regarding the health plan, the report lists a variety of differences between SAG’s plan and AFTRA’s the SAG plan looks better in more respects than AFTRA’s, but the report draws no conclusions as to what a merged plan might look like. On the contrary, the 2003 document says that pension plan costs were likely to go up or benefits go down “with or without a merger” (p. STORY: Actors Equity Endorses SAG-AFTRA Mergerĭays earlier, another plaintiff – anti-merger activist and former SAG board member Michael Bell – wrote that the Mercer Report “clearly showed a dimunition of benefits if SAG merged with AFTRA.”īut there’s a problem with this narrative: the report doesn’t “clearly show” any such thing. Likewise, in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter yesterday, SAG board member Anne-Marie Johnson, a plaintiff in the lawsuit, said that the Mercer Report had concluded that “any merger of the SAG pension and health plan with the AFTRA health and retirement plan would cause a diminution of benefits to SAG members.” “Based on the conclusions of the 2003 Mercer Report, Plaintiffs and the SAG membership will be imminently and irrevocably harmed” if merger proceeds, said the complaint, including by “diminution in value of member benefits, union funds, pension benefits, (and) health benefits.”

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