You never forget your first union card. It’s small, plastic, and wildly unimpressive to look at — but it might as well be Excalibur. For an actor, joining the union is the day the dream starts to feel real: when you stop pretending to be in the club and actually get your name on the list.
It’s also the day you learn that “solidarity forever” isn’t just a lyric from an old song — it’s the invisible current that keeps a creative life afloat. I didn’t know that yet, of course. I just knew I’d finally made it.
Scene One: South Carolina, Late 1990s
I was in my final year at the University of South Carolina, working on my MFA in theater. Between classes, rehearsals, and too much drinking, I was somehow also getting paid to act — mostly commercials and industrial films.
My agent, Charlie Peterson, was a working actor himself — one of the fishermen in the opening scene of Swamp Thing. My professor, Richard Jennings, had been in that scene too, and he introduced us. Before long, Charlie had me driving around the Carolinas auditioning for anything that moved.
Columbia wasn’t exactly Hollywood South. I drove to Wilmington or Charlotte for nearly every job, squinting at maps in the days before GPS. Still, I worked. One gig was a safety training video for 3M Chemicals, the kind of “Goofus and Gallant” morality tale meant to show new hires what not to do.
I died repeatedly — run over by forklifts, electrocuted, perforated — always for the greater good. We filmed in a weird, nondescript chemical plant that was somehow both sterile and filthy, like a prison that made ibuprofen.
Actually, when I asked one of the guys what they produced, he said,
“You know that white stuff inside an ibuprofen?”
“Yeah.”
“We make the stuff that isn’t ibuprofen.”
To this day, I’m still thinking about that.
Another gig was a public-service campaign called “Highways and Dieways” for the South Carolina Highway Patrol. I was the cautionary tale again — covered in chocolate syrup (for “blood”), flailing dramatically in a wrecked car. It was a masterpiece of moral instruction and low-budget filmmaking.
I sometimes imagine that old safety video still looping in some dim breakroom, my twenty-something self dying nobly for generations of chemical workers — a ghost trapped in VHS purgatory.
Scene Two: Academia vs. Reality
By then I was working more than most of my classmates — and, evidently, more than a few of my professors thought I should. One pulled me aside to tell me I was “losing focus.” She said maybe I wasn’t cut out for a professional career. Her actual advice? Clown college.
Two years into an expensive graduate degree, and my professor wanted me to run away with the circus. I’ll spare you my exact thoughts in that moment, but let’s just say she gave me a masterclass in motivation.
Then, in perfect comic timing, my cell phone rang — which, in the late ’90s, was practically a declaration of arrogance. She glared. I answered anyway. It was Charlie Peterson, telling me I’d booked my first union job.
So there I was, being told I’d never make it — as I quite literally made it.
Scene Three: “Surfing’s the Source”
A few days earlier, a fax had come into Charlie’s office (remember faxes?). One line on the casting call simply said: “Surfer.”
“Hey,” I said, “that’s me.”
Charlie raised an eyebrow. “You can surf?”
“Sure,” I lied.
I’d always wanted to surf. I’d stood near surfboards. I’d even watched Point Break enough times to quote it by heart. Good enough. Charlie sent me to Charlotte for the audition.
I wore my grandfather’s old Bali shirt — the most surfer-ish thing I owned — and stepped into the room. They had me turn for profiles, then asked, “So… tell us about surfing.”
I froze. Then instinct took over.
“Well,” I said, “surfing’s the source. Change your life, swear to God.”
The woman behind the camera nodded. “Where’d you learn to surf?”
“Latigo Beach,” I said. “Nice point break. Long workable rides.”
They smiled, thanked me, and that was it. I’d just quoted Point Break verbatim — to real adults — as my audition. Two stolen Keanu Reeves lines later, I was back in the car heading home.
Scene Four: Bellsouth, and Belonging
Then came that phone call in the professor’s office. I’d landed the job: a Bellsouth commercial. My first union gig. Union pay. Union protection.
For a broke grad student, it felt like hitting the lottery. But more than that, it was proof — maybe to myself more than anyone — that I could actually work as an actor. Charlie was over the moon. “You gotta be there, Fitch.”
I was terrified. I still couldn’t surf. Luckily, there wasn’t an ocean in sight. The shoot took place in a downtown coffee shop. They didn’t want a surfer who could surf, just one who looked like he might. I nailed that part.
I did, however, double-book myself — a commercial shoot by day and a theater performance that night. I had to ask to leave early, a sin in the professional world, but somehow they forgave me.
That was 1999, maybe 2000. The check was small, the job short, but the impact permanent. I had my union card.
Scene Five: Solidarity, Then and Now
That little piece of plastic meant I belonged. It was proof that I wasn’t just pretending anymore — that I was part of something bigger than myself. Years later, I’d join more unions: Actors’ Equity for stage, then the Seattle Education Association and the Washington Education Association when I became a teacher.
Those sign-ups weren’t cinematic — just paperwork and direct deposit forms — but the spirit was the same: solidarity, protection, connection.
Unions are the great equalizer in a country obsessed with hierarchies. They say, “No, you can’t just do whatever you want to people.” They give working folks a seat at the table — whether those folks are actors, teachers, baristas, or pilots.
SAG-AFTRA has its flaws, of course. On any given day, maybe 1 to 5 percent of its members are working under a union contract. Over a year, 15 to 25 percent. The rest are waiting, hustling, hoping. An accountant friend once told me that means the system’s broken. Maybe. But I think it just means the fight isn’t finished.
Because the alternative — a world without unions — is one where every worker faces the machine alone. And lately, with union-busting practically a campaign slogan, that fight feels more urgent than ever.
Scene Six: Curtain Call
When I think back to those early days — standing in a chemical plant with my friend Guy Molnar, laughing about buying Preparation H at a Piggly Wiggly to de-puff our eyes; quoting Keanu Reeves in an audition like my life depended on it; bolting from a commercial shoot to make curtain in Columbia — I can’t help but smile.
I didn’t realize it then, but that little card would outlast any role. It carried me through two careers and countless reinventions. It reminded me that creative life, like collective life, only works when we have each other’s backs.
My union card wasn’t just an entry into show business — it was a quiet promise:
that in a world built on competition, the only real safety net we have is solidarity.
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