AA&D News
The FIA Charter for Gender Equality and Equal Opportunities has grown out of extensive work by the International Federation of Actors, dating from 1975 to the present day, in documenting the inequalities and discrimination experienced by women in the performing arts. While progress has been made, it has been slow and inadequate. Combating discrimination and promoting equality remains a core concern of FIA.
FIA believes that all performers should enjoy equal rights and equal opportunities in the profession, backed by meaningful social and economic guarantees. The present Charter gives expression to the ongoing work of FIA and its member trade unions to achieve equal opportunities for performers across a number of key areas.
It is clear that women performers face a range of obstacles and challenges that impact significantly on their working conditions and careers. A wide body of research, including surveys carried out by the Federation and its member unions, testify to this fact. Women performers face shorter careers, lower wages, a narrower choice of work and a difficult work-life balance. These difficulties are bound up in two major factors: contractual and working conditions and artistic considerations. Both must be addressed in order to achieve equality between male and female performers.
Click here to download the complete FIA Charter for Gender Equality and Equal Opportunities.
Screen Actors Guild mourns the passing of labor leader and activist, John Delloro, who passed away in the early morning of Saturday, June 5, 2010 from a heart attack.
"John was taken from us much too soon. But in the brief time we had with him, as our APALA leader, he taught, energized, inspired and encouraged us to be beacons for all workers," said Sumi Haru, SAG National Board Member and Vice-Chair of SAG Ethnic Employment Opportunities Committee.
Delloro’s first position in the labor movement was organizing hotel workers in Las Vegas, Nevada with the Culinary Workers Union 226. He went on to organize clerical workers with AFSCME, and health care workers with SEIU 399 in Los Angeles, California. While at SEIU 399, he created a member organizing program that trained hundreds of rank and file members that actively participated in external organizing campaigns. In 2003, he was promoted to the Southwest Area Manager of SEIU 1000, the largest state workers union in the country at the time, with close to 100,000 members.
In 2006, he was hired as the first Executive Director of the Dolores Huerta Labor Institute, an organization that is expanding labor studies curriculum within the Los Angeles Community College District, which has over 130,000 students. Under his leadership, the program has strengthened labor studies on all nine campuses, and has exposed thousands of community college students to unions. Since 2007, he has also taught Asian American Studies at UCLA, and has inspired and mentored hundreds of students.
Delloro served as National President of the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance where he played a leadership role in expanding labor, community and student partnerships. Under his leadership as National President, APALA and the AFL-CIO convened the first National Asian Pacific American Workers’ Rights Hearing in Washington D.C. in November 2009. Following the hearing, Delloro was a principal author in Breaking Ground, Breaking Silence, a report from the first National Asian Pacific American Workers’ Rights Hearing. In 2009, Delloro received the Unsung Hero Award by Asian Pacific Americans for Progress.
“Screen Actors Guild recognizes John Delloro’s contributions to the labor movement, and stands side-by-side with the labor community and the Asian Pacific Islander American community as we mourn the loss of a compassionate and dedicated leader,” said Rebecca Yee, SAG National Director, Affirmative Action and Diversity.
