Actors union loses support for strike vote

[January 23, 2009]  LOS ANGELES (AP) -- The Screen Actors Guild has lost the support of a majority of its board to proceed with a strike vote after a hard-line faction within the union and the guild's president on Thursday backed a plan to suspend the vote.

A group of Hollywood actors, led by guild president Alan Rosenberg, said Thursday it is also recommending sending the movie studios' final three-year contract offer directly to its 120,000 members for a vote.

The group's statement follows months of preparations for a strike vote that would have given the guild the power to shut down production of major-studio movies and prime-time TV shows. The last contract expired in June.

Although the guild has not acted officially to revoke its Oct. 19 plan to call a strike vote if mediation failed, the Hollywood group known as Membership First was the last major bloc still supporting that plan. Its reversal now means chances of a walkout are extremely slim.

Along with the 25 national board members who backed Thursday's statement and the 14 board members from the New York division who came out last month against the strike vote, more than half of the 71 board members have now come out publicly in support of suspending or scrapping plans for a strike vote.

Thursday's statement came after a contentious 30-hour meeting last week at which Membership First filibustered and fended off a motion by upset board members to fire the guild's lead negotiator, National Executive Director Doug Allen.

Allen later backtracked on calls for a strike vote and suggested instead sending the producers' offer to actors for a vote.

"Reaching the obligatory 75 percent (support) of the SAG membership would be hard to achieve," the Hollywood group said in a statement. "We ... support the compromise presented by Doug Allen to the national board to suspend the strike authorization and to send the (studios') final offer out to the membership."

The guild said it had not yet acted on Allen's proposal, which included holding a last round of talks with studios to see if they were willing to improve their final offer.

"SAG's national board of directors has not suspended the strike authorization referendum and the board's Oct. 19 resolution is the last national board decision on this matter," it said in a statement.

The guild's board had voted overwhelmingly in October to hold a strike vote if last-ditch mediation with the studios failed. Despite those talks quickly falling apart, support for a strike vote waned as the economy worsened, and a date for the vote was delayed several times.

Technically, the guild said, it could conduct a strike vote with no further board action.

Jonathan Handel, an entertainment lawyer who has been following the contract dispute, said the guild has struggled to find a clear strategy in the face of the studios' refusal to budge from its final offer made last June.

"These guys are flailing, they've been flailing for quite some time actually," Handel said. "They've been struggling and bouncing from strategy to strategy with no clear focus. I think this just emphasizes that."

Ned Vaughn, the leader of a group on the board called Unite for Strength, which broke Membership First's majority in elections in September, said its majority coalition is still pressing for a shake-up at the guild.

"Our resolve to make those changes remains firm," he said in a statement. "We also remain firm in our belief that SAG members deserve to vote on a TV/theatrical contract that the national board recommends ratifying."

The studios, represented by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, declined to comment.

The guild's board must meet to send out the contract offer and it remains unclear if it will reach consensus on whether to support it. A simple majority, or more than 50 percent of voting members, are required to ratify the contract.

The Hollywood group maintains that the offer is still unacceptable because it fails to guarantee guild coverage in productions made for the Internet, fails to make residual payments on made-for-Internet content that is rerun online, and doesn't protect actor benefits in unforeseen work stoppages.

[Associated Press; By RYAN NAKASHIMA]

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