SAG-AFTRA’s National Board has appointed the union’s chief operating officer and general counsel Duncan Crabtree-Ireland as its next national executive director and chief negotiator.
The board approved a three-year contract at a special meeting held today. Compensation details were not released. SAG-AFTRA announced May 14 that national executive director and chief negotiator David P. White was stepping down from the role he held since 2009.
Crabtree-Ireland will assume the role effective June 21. Crabtree-Ireland has served as general counsel of SAG-AFTRA since 2006 and as COO since 2014.
Gabrielle Carteris, president of SAG-AFTRA, said, “I couldn’t be more pleased that our board has selected Duncan Crabtree-Ireland as national executive director. Duncan is a natural choice, an experienced leader and well respected by members and staff. I am confident that under his leadership, the union will continue building on the achievements and stability he has overseen working alongside David White over the past dozen years. I congratulate Duncan and look forward to working with him in his new capacity.”
Crabtree-Ireland stated, “It is an honor to accept this position and I look forward to continuing to work with members, the National Board, local boards, officers and staff in this new role. Together, we will build on the successes that have been achieved in recent years, as well as strategizing and innovating for the future as we navigate the dramatic changes taking place in our industry. I am grateful to the National Board for its vote of confidence and remain in awe of SAG-AFTRA’s remarkable history and service to its members.”
As SAG-AFTRA’s longtime second in command chief operating officer and general counsel, Crabtree-Ireland has been involved in many of SAG-AFTRA’s signature achievements over the past two decades, including being a key participant in the successful merger between SAG and AFTRA in 2012, and serving as the coordinator of SAG-AFTRA’s successful COVID safety response and return-to-work initiatives. Crabtree-Ireland is a tough but strategic negotiator serving as lead negotiator for SAG-AFTRA’s music contracts as well as other contracts. Crabtree-Ireland is bilingual in English and Spanish, and has been the lead negotiator for SAG-AFTRA’s contract with the Telemundo network for Spanish language productions. He also oversees the union’s bilingual initiative, and is a co-host of the SAG-AFTRA Podcast En Español.
He has played a central role in strategic planning efforts and diversity programs including overseeing SAG-AFTRA’s Legal, Equity & Inclusion, Governance, Government Affairs & Public Policy, Professional Representatives, Administration, and Information Technology departments, as well as the union’s international affairs, including foreign royalties.
Crabtree-Ireland formerly served as a criminal prosecutor for the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office and has received numerous awards for his work and service throughout his career, including the Peggy Browning Award, the Corporate Counsel Award from the Los Angeles Business Journal, the Los Angeles County Bar Association’s Samuel L. Williams Outstanding Trustee Award, the Profiles in Diversity Award from the Association of Corporate Counsel and the California Minority Counsel Project, the Co-President’s Award from the Los Angeles LGBTQ+ Bar Association, and the Labor Counsel of the Year award from the Association of Media & Entertainment Counsel. In 2019, he received the SAG-AFTRA George Heller Memorial Award for extraordinary service to SAG-AFTRA and its members.
He is the chair of the board of trustees of the SAG-AFTRA & Industry Sound Recordings Distribution Fund, the co-chair of the board of trustees of the AFM & SAG-AFTRA Intellectual Property Rights Distribution Fund, a member of the boards of the SAG-Producers Pension Plan, the SAG-AFTRA Health Plan, and SoundExchange, and is a delegate to the International Federation of Actors and serves as co-convenor of its Global Diversity Working Group. He has served as a longtime adjunct professor at the University of Southern California Law School. He is a past chair of the Conference of California Bar Associations, a past treasurer of the Los Angeles County Bar Association, a past co-president of the LGBTQ Bar Association of Los Angeles, and serves by appointment as a judge pro tem of the Los Angeles Superior Court.
Previously, Crabtree-Ireland served as Screen Actors Guild’s deputy national executive director.
Crabtree-Ireland received his Bachelor of Science in foreign service with a concentration in international relations, law, and organization from Georgetown University and his Juris Doctorate from the University of California, Davis, School of Law, where he was inducted into the Order of Barristers.
Crabtree-Ireland lives in Los Angeles with his husband, John, and their five children.
About Duncan Crabtree-Ireland
- Duncan Crabtree-Ireland is SAG-AFTRA’s longtime second in command, chief operating officer and general counsel.
- General counsel since 2006.
- Second in command since 2010.
- COO since 2014.
- He is the only person other than David White to have all three core areas of experience:
- Lead negotiator of major, multiple-employer collective bargaining agreements.
- Telemundo (first contract, in Spanish).
- Music Video Agreement (two cycles).
- Sound Recordings Code (three cycles – almost 10 years).
Overseer of union operations.
- Has managed virtually all union departments other than contracts, and was co-head of the Music Contracts department.
- Widely regarded as an excellent manager; ensured complex projects are completed successfully and on budget.
- Overseer of legal affairs/activities.
Experienced lawyer.
- Ensured success in litigation by and against SAG-AFTRA
- Extraordinary success for members as lead negotiator in collective bargaining.
Sound Recordings Code.
- Achieved first-ever expansion of streaming payments to include worldwide usage, resulting in massive increases in streaming payments to members, averaging a 10% increase every year.
- Achieved first-ever payment of health and retirement plan contributions on streaming money, then tripled the contribution amount in the next round of bargaining, generating millions of dollars in additional contributions to the health and retirement plans.
- Designed and achieved a new licensing payment system that has increased compliance with licensing from 20% to almost 100% and more than tripled licensing revenue to members, while building in protections to ensure no members were left out.
Music Video Agreement.
- Achieved first-ever residuals payments for music video use on streaming platforms.
- Successfully bargained for expansion of contract to include background performers for the first time — even though it was not a mandatory subject of bargaining.
- Achieved 10 covered background positions in the first negotiation — more than the average number of background performers employed on music videos — creating thousands of union-covered background jobs that were previously non-union.
Telemundo
- Successfully concluded a first contract after 16 months of bargaining with an anti-union employer, starting from scratch in a totally non-union segment of the industry.
- Prior to this negotiation, Telemundo actors had no health plan, no retirement, no residuals, no wage minimums.
- As lead negotiator and often working in Spanish, Crabtree-Ireland achieved all three key pillars of the negotiation established by the member committee at the beginning:
- First-ever mandatory minimum wages at Telemundo.
- First-ever health or retirement contributions and benefits.
- First-ever residuals for supplemental use of members’ work.
