DAVID WHITE INCOMPETENCE EVIDENCE
THE CONTROLLING POLITICAL PARTY CURRENTLY AT SAG-AFTRA, UNITED FOR STRENGTH LEAD BY INTERIM PRESIDENT GABRIELLE CARTERIS, RE-UPPED DAVID WHITE’S CONTRACT FOR TWO ADDITIONAL YEARS ON THE GROUNDS OF HIS ALLEGED BRILLIANT PERFORMANCE. THIS DOCUMENT EVIDENCES THAT DAVID WHITE’S PERFORMANCE AS AN A NATIONAL EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR HAS BEEN SUBPAR AT BEST. IT IS TIME FOR SAG-AFTRA TO BE LEAD WITH THE TRUTH.
This post is misdirection and used to cover up the abysmal performance of Mr. White in regard to his duties as Executive Director. Skin color has no scientific basis with ones performance.
This is a member run guild, created by and for its members. Legally all decisions in theory are made final by the national board currently controlled by UFS. It is also disingenuous and unethical for any paid staff or elected leader not to make public any business decisions made or being considered that would damage the financial infrastructure of SAG AFTRA or cause financial harm to any member at large. If the board listens to David Whites bad advice they must be held accountable.
If David White and or UFS was the CEO of a publicly traded company he/they would be fired for negligent/incompetent business practices for their judgment in regard to wasting 16 million dollars of the member’s money for renting empty office space in New York to include 1 million in new Italian furniture that was UN-needed. He/they also supported another 500k for remodeling the Cagney room in LA that resulted in less seating in a building SAG AFTRA does not own in addition to paying 5.2 million dollars in rent at 5757 Wilshire blvd. (Complete misuse of members funds)
White/UFS fired 40% of the staff at SAG AFTRA and closed 10 regional offices and White had the audacity to take a 60K raise. Top down Wall Street arrogance at the expense of fired employees. This demonstrates his lack of regard for ethical business practices.
White pre-merger did not audit AFTRA’s finances and tax returns 3 years in arrears and match them with their books. This is a standard practice when considering a merger between 2 business entities. 5 months after the merger was voted up AFTRA was found to have 11000 dues members on their books that did not exist along with many material deficiencies within their accounting practices. AFTRA as evidenced by the LM-2 yearend financial records was close to bankruptcy. Are these the actions of an competent Corporate leader?
This lack of due diligence damaged the finances of SAG as they borrowed 3 million dollars from the member’s unclaimed residual trust fund and an additional 3 million from the general investment fund to shore up their spending deficit. White never disclosed this fact to the membership in addition to the National Board Unite for Strength members, who also did not disclose this information.
White also withheld the fact that the SAG Pension & Health plan was under an FBI investigation for embezzlement. When this information became public White stood up for the plans employees publically stating, “Nothing was wrong”, (I paraphrase here). He was not truthful. If White had disclosed that AFTRA was close to bankruptcy and SAG’s Pension and health plan was embezzled for millions of dollars do you think the merger would have passed? White did not allow the membership an educated vote. We as members who control this guild cannot allow SAG-AFTRA to operate in secret any longer.
AFTRA made a deal with the Associated Talent Ageny's (ATA) that allowed agencies to own 20% of production companies. This incentivised ICM, WME, CAA, UTA etc to put their writer/show-runner clients together with AFTRA contracts so they would benefit an additional 10% from the transaction. AFTRA undercut SAG's contract.
White and Unite for Strength never recommended nor filed a jurisdictional complaint against AFTRA when they stole/poached SAG’s jurisdiction/shows. Ned Vaugn said it couldn’t be done and is proven incorrect evidenced by SAG previously filing 14 jurisdictional complaints with the NLRB and winning 11 of them. I consider this act dereliction of duty and a violation of title 5 of the LMRDA.
White also supported the Unite for Strength propaganda stating that the merger would end split earnings. This statement was proven false evidenced by codified split earnings in perpetuity. The merger was pushed on that false foundation/promise. White never recommended an impact/actuary study on the SAG plan pre merger, instead he cajoled the membership with a meaningless “feasibility Study” that is not grounded in specificity in regard to the actual financial impact that merging the SAG and AFTRA plans would have on the finances and terms, conditions and solvency of each plan. (If it is cold outside it is "feasible" you would wear a jacket.) A feasibility study has no basis in a specific scientific study. This proves White, Unite for Strength and Carteris’s actions are based in financial incompetence.
White and Unite for Strength ignored the Mercer report which sated in specificity that merging the SAG and AFTRA plan would result in a diminution of benefits for SAG plan members. White, Gabriel Carteris and the entire UFS political party discredited the Mercer report publically in their quest to get the merger passed. (these actions are fiscally idiotic)
Per the published terms and conditions of the proposed SAG-AFTRA health plan merger Mercer is proven correct. SAG fees are increased and AFTRA yearly fees for their family plan decreases by $15000 dollars, from $17,260 per year to about $2000 per year. Instead of qualified earnings of $10,000, AFTRA and SAG participants under the combined plan must earn $17,000. A $2000 dollar increase for SAG members. Who do you think is paying for this subsidy? SAG plan members are footing the bill.
White now states AFTRA had a surplus? If that is true then why didn’t the terms and conditions of AFTRA’s health plan benefit improve as a result of that surplus and why was SAG’s P & H plan the only one to participate in the 2015-16 subsidy where and AFTRA member can earn $10,000 in AFTRA and $5000 in SAG to meet the combined earnings threshold in SAG and qualify for plan 2?
Why didn’t AFTRA’s plan participate if it did in fact have a surplus? This bodes the question, was the alleged 57% contribution to SAG's plan rigged to the benefit of AFTRA by the metric of more AFTRA shows existing and/or being created for the purpose of enriching AFTRA’s plan? Remember the membership had no economist nor financial analyst performing any checks and balances on any economic merger claim structure models made by the SAG P & H and the AFTRA H & R fund. This is another reason why both the AFTRA and SAG Pension and Health funds should be forensically audited.
This hypothesis is now proven correct evidenced by the current 3.4 million dollar embezzlement discovered just one month after the SAG and AFTRA health plan merger. According to the department of Labor report we would have found this out well over a year ago if the plan was forensically audited insofar the fraud/embezzlement was in progress for about 5 years. More evidence of uneducated, negligent and possible criminally negligent actions committed by White, Carteris and Unite for Strength.
Is it a coincidence that the discoveries of malfeasance only occurred after the merger of SAG-AFTRA and immediately after the health plan merger or is it financial negligence? This reeks of a cover up.
White is a Rhode Scholar, a labor lawyer and yet our collective bargaining agreement is not being enforced insofar our travel fee provisions and portal to portal are not being honored/enforced.
He allowed the NBC TV show Revolution to pay 75 dollars a day for travel when the producing company was domiciled in California. That is a direct violation of our collective bargaining agreement. White neglected to get this law enforced losing a few hundred thousand in revenue for members including Pension and Health contributions which would have resulted in increased dues payments benefiting SAG-AFTRA's general fund.
White,UFS and Gabriel Carteris permit CNBC, MSNBC and CNN to work NON-UNION. This precedent allows all members to work non union and no disciplinary action may be taken as legal precedent would give no grounds to harm any member who works non union insofar SAG-AFTRA refuses to enforce its own bylaws. To be selective in this duplicitous practice is discriminatory. When I am President any SAG-AFTRA member who is employed at any of the aforementioned NON UNION NETWORKS who refuse to abide by the terms and conditions of SAG-AFTRA will be expelled forthwith.
Unite for Strength believe White is so valuable and doing a great job? Did the regional office employees who got promised they would keep their jobs if they pushed the merger agenda forward think White was doing a great job after they all lost their jobs and their health care for their families when White closed their offices? Did they feel pissed on when they read that the SAG AFTRA executive staff got over 1 million dollars in raises after the merger passed and they got fired?
Unite for Strength and Gabriel Carteris believe that White and the executive staff are so valuable that they have no problem making sure they have double our pension cap (210k) and that staff can retire after only 20 years of service with a full pension based upon an average of 70% of their 5 best consecutive years of earnings. Members have to work 10 additional years to receive a full pension. Any staff member who earns 100k for 5 consecutive years would earn a better pension than Tom Cruise who earned hundreds of millions. This is neither fair, equitable nor ethical. As President of SAG-AFTRA, I will fight to restore parity between the members and the staff Pension Terms and conditions.
UFS believes our staff needs incentives or they would seek employment elsewhere. That’s a fantasy insofar that our economy is abysmal and most executive staff members would not be likely to find employment at their current salaries. (According to the LM-2's, 113 staff members out of approximately 625 earn in-between 99k and 651k per year. (Staff earns more money than similar for profit publicly traded companies) 62% of SAG-AFTRA's operating capital go to staff expenses, salaries etc. This is an unusually high metric and evidences SAG-AFTRA business practices favor the enrichment of the staff instead of providing and protecting the best interests of the membership.
Lastly, White never gave any high level staff non-compete clauses in their contracts. This has cost us dearly as Netflix scooped up Joan Halpern Wise (Chief Contract Negotiator). I believe this clause is moot in California law however SAG can hire talent out of states it operates in that the non-compete law is in play.
Special Note: SAG P & H CEO Michael Estrada, SAG AFTRA Counsel, Ray Rodriguez and COO Duncan Crabtree Ireland and Gabriel Carteris have all stated that SAG’s plan was forensically audited by PwC in 2008. Miss Carteris and SAG Pension Trustee Mike Pzniewski stated this on video at a membership meeting in Atlanta. I gave Miss Carteris the December 2011, pension trustee letter addressed to the plan participants that prove the plan was never forensically audited. I say to Gabriel and the aforementioned Trustees and employees of the plan, PRODUCE THE DOCUMENT AND RESTORE TRUST OR ORDER THE FORENSIC AUDIT.
I and many other honest members to include National Board Member Robin Riker, Local Board Member Cupid Hays, Linda Harcharic, Michael Bell and Luis Herthum have repeatedly asked for a copy of this "alleged" forensic audit from Plan CEO Michael Estrada, David White, Secretary Treasurer Jane Austin and Duncan Crabtree Ireland. None of the aforementioned people have produced the document to date. This evidences the gross lack of transparency mandated by Carteris, White and UFS. There was a petition signed by over 1600 people demanding a forensic audit and White, Carteris and UFS refused to acknowledge the will of the people. Do these actions stand for the highest good of all members?
This administration wasted 16 million dollars on empty real estate and they think it egregious to spend up to 1 million on forensic audits to protect all P & H plan participants? That is the cost according to my hands on research as I spoke to a highly accredited forensic auditor. These actions by the current administration reek of economic incompetence.
Solution: Vote out all Unite for Strength members and restore ethical leadership and financial responsibility back to SAG AFTRA. As far as David White doing a “great job and we are lucky to have him”…You be the judge…I believe the facts paint a different picture.
We are run by lawyers and actors who “act” like businessmen/women. Ethical leadership should mandate transparency, honesty and integral behavior as the law of the land. I would replace unethical executives and actors with MBA’s in corporate finance and restore fiscal responsibility and use the capital where it belongs…to provide service to the membership.
I believe we must change the constitution to put checks and balances in place to keep the president’s position from having the powers of a dictator. We must shift from a constitution that is now AFTRA biased to the much improved financial structure of the old SAG. May I remind everyone that AFTRA was nearly bankrupt before merger and should have been forensically audited before we merged to protect the SAG members. David White and the UFS controlled National Board neglected their duty in this regard. (Title 5 and Title 1 violations) If you fail to study history you are doomed to repeat it.
I am running for President of SAG-AFTRA and supporting other ethical members. Blessings.
Making history in Hollywood: David White is first Black Executive Director of SAG-AFTRA
David White, 48, made history as the first African-American to helm SAG-AFTRA as its National Executive Director.
NBCNEWS.COM|BY NBC NEWS
WHY WOULD NBC POST THIS PANDERING STORY NOW INSTEAD WHEN WHITE TOOK THE POSITION IN 2008? THIS ARTICLE IS 9 YEARS LATE. YELLOW JOURNALISM AT ITS FINEST.