The Stage

Redman blasts Equity over cable repeat fees, blaming open shop policy

Published Tuesday 27 January 2004 at 14:15 by Joanna Taylor

Amanda Redman has criticised Equity for being “very weak”, particularly in its negotiating of cable channel repeat fees, and has blamed the situation on the fact the union is no longer a closed shop.

Her comments come after Richard Briers recently branded as “legalised theft” the deals Equity has undertaken with channels such as UK Gold for repeats of shows including The Good Life. Their criticism could be seen as indicative of the increasing gulf between actors at the top of their profession and the union that is supposed to represent them. A recent campaign was launched featuring Ewan MacGregor trying to attract well-known actors back to the union.

Said Redman, who has recently starred in At Home with the Braithwaites and Hope & Glory: “I don’t think that I have ever knowingly received a fee from any of the cable people when anything I have been in has been retransmitted and I have been in a lot of things that have had fresh life on the new channel.

“If I have had monetary gain from those shows, it has been a matter of a few pence - rather than a few pounds. The trouble is that our acting union Equity used to be very strong and now it is sadly very weak and we have been left behind in the negotiations where new technology is concerned. We are no longer a closed shop and I regret that - anyone can become, and get a job as, an actor now - as is proved by the proliferation of the ‘reality’ shows.”

Under the terms of Equity’s agreement with channels such as UK Gold, broadcasters wanting to transmit old British programmes pay a one-off sum for a licence to show a set number of programmes, usually a series. The cast then shares 17% of that lump sum between them - the share being relevant to their prominence in the show.

Although Equity and the BBC never had a closed shop agreement, it did operate one within the ITV companies. Legislation passed by Margaret Thatcher’s government ruled that employment could not be refused to someone on the grounds that they did or did not belong to a union. Membership of such bodies has fallen dramatically since then and many, including Equity, have had to launch extra incentives to attract members.

An Equity spokesman said: “In a multi-channel TV world where some channels get audiences that are so small they cannot be measured, it is inevitable that some payments to performers will be small. This is nothing to do with the closed shop or the strength of Equity. It was, after all, after the closed shop that Equity reversed nearly a century of history and got repeat payments for actors in feature films.”