Justine Bateman resigns from SAG board

July 08, 2009 Justine Bateman, the SAG national board member whose potty-mouthed rants against AFTRA put her on the extreme edge of union politics, has resigned in part because of SAG members' overwhelming approval last month of a new TV-film contract. "SAG members ... have now voted up a contract that will cause 50% of the working members to leave the business," she wrote in her resignation letter. In the letter, Bateman not only repeated her assertion that AFTRA is a "scumbag" union (a term she used last year), she also noted that not enough of SAG's rank and file "expressed the correct anger at AFTRA [for] low-balling contracts over the years that affected their ability to provide for themselves."

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