Hollywood actors union invites TV counterpart to join in talks
15/4/2008 17:58
In a move that muddies the outlook for looming labor negotiations,
Hollywood's major actors union has offered its counterpart in the television
industry an opportunity to rejoin at the bargaining table.
The new offer by
the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) to the American Federation of Television and Radio
Artists (AFTRA) came just two weeks after the 70,000-member AFTRA decided to
sever its 27-year joint bargaining agreement with the 120,000-member SAG.
The
SAG offer, made in a Sunday evening announcement, said AFTRA would have until
tomorrow to respond, according to Hollywood trade publication Variety
today.
SAG said in the brief announcement that only that 81 percent of its
national board had okayed the offer, which was approved at the end of a day-long
meeting in Los Angeles.
The AFL-CIO, a US national labor union center, has
been reportedly attempting to smooth out the extensive disputes between the two
actors unions, but with little success. The March 29 breakup of the two unions
culminated years of hostility between them over jurisdictional issues.
SAG's
talks with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP),
which represents major studios and TV networks, on a new feature-primetime deal
begin today, while AFTRA's talks on its primetime contract are set to start
April 28.
If AFTRA turns down SAG's offer, the guild will be under pressure
to reach an agreement with the AMPTP by April 28 or face the prospect of ongoing
jurisdictional warfare with AFTRA.
Meanwhile, SAG leaders over the weekend
split over a divisive proposal that would have limited member voting on the
contract to actors who work at least one day a year, in an effort to reduce
prospects of a strike.
Many board members argued that would exclude most
guild members because the majority of the union's 120,000 members do not work
regularly, while supporters said non-working members would be more likely to
favor a strike.
The "qualified voting" proposal, which has been sent to the
guild's governance review committee for study, probably would have resulted in
less support for a possible strike when the contract expires June
30.
Although SAG president Alan Rosenberg has repeatedly said that his union
doesn't want a strike, Hollywood studios have concerns over SAG's assertive
stance and its close alliance with writers during the writers strike starting in
last November.
Such concerns have led to a ramp-up of feature production in
studios with the goal of finishing shooting by the end of June as a hedge
against a work stoppage, Variety reported.
Many Hollywood A-list actors like
Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep and Robert De Niro had been pressing the SAG to avoid a
potential strike like the recently ended writers strike, which had cost the
entertainment industry and local economy billions of
dollars.
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