The leaders of Canada’s screen acting union and the country’s primary advertising associations have come to terms on a new National Commercial Agreement (NCA), one that proposes pay hikes for performers and greater flexibility and cost certainty for marketers.
The Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists (ACTRA), the Association of Canadian Advertisers (ACA) and the Institute of Communication Agencies (ICA) ended five months of negotiating yesterday with a mediated settlement.
Under the terms of the tentative deal, commercial performers would receive pay increases of 2.5% per year for each of the three years of the agreement. Actors would also get a 1.5% boost in residual fees.
Advertisers, meanwhile, stand to benefit from more relaxed rules about featuring non-ACTRA members, such as employees and lottery winners, in commercial productions. In addition, advertisers would be able to pay residual fees to performers up front and at a reduced rate for spots intended for both broadcast and new media usage, altering a system that currently requires a separate “move-over” payment for new media.
The expanding use of digital media was one of the contentious issues in the last round of bargaining between ACTRA, the ACA and ICA in 2008. Bob Shropshire, president of Dentsu Canada and the chief negotiator for the ACA and ICA, said this round of talks was no less challenging but delivered a worthwhile result.
“The negotiation took a long time and it took five or six days of mediation to get to a deal,” he said. “Really it was just about the economic realities everyone’s facing today and trying to tailor the agreement so that performers could still earn a decent income from the work that they do, yet make production affordable for agencies and advertisers.
“I think it’s a win-win deal.”
The tentative agreement would also continue to boost professional performers’ involvement in spots produced for new media by extending for two years the existing new media production pilot agreement.
The agreement must now be ratified by the membership of all three organizations, a process that could take up to a month. If all sides approve, the new NCA will come into effect Oct. 31.
